


Love in Heritage

by TheDarkSide



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bloodshed, Butsuma is an asshole, Canon-Typical Violence, Dirty thought, Dragons, F/M, Idiot Hashirama, Judgment, M/M, Madara's temper, Mental Instability, PTSD, Prejudice, Prosecution, Scenting, Secrets, Sexual Content, Terrible Family Relationships, Tobirama suffers from self hate, animalistic habits, canibalism of sorts, change, chronic erections, he's going to give himself a stroke, hormonal suffering, multiple personality of sorts, people arent helping, soul mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-09-13 02:44:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16884165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkSide/pseuds/TheDarkSide
Summary: Tobirama is a child of war. A shinobi and a tool. He is also so much more, and not all of it is pleasant. When his father sets a box full containing a broken shell in his hand and sends him off to read the scroll of his heritage, Tobirama is unsure where to turn other than away. Life goes on regardless, and the young Senju learns to cope with things for the sake of his siblings.





	1. A perfectly Monstrous Weapon

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw among the reams of comments on the Soulmate Collection by @raendown that someone really wants a Dragon AU. This is my take on that. "A little dark, little gloomy, and wha'd'ya know, full o' dead people".

Tobirama is unlike his brothers. Pale skinned, paler than even little Itama with his ebony and ivory hair, “It  **needs** to be divided Tobi-nii stop muddling it!”, and Kawarama with his sandy hair and skin. Next to Hashirama he’s as pale as a ghost in comparison to the deep chestnut of his tan and earth brown hair.

For all Butsuma has raised him as mostly equal to the other boys of the Senju Main House, it’s only mostly. He’s not gifted with the same soft looks, the ones that ease the crease between his eyebrows with love. His father looks at him with the same eyes he turns on a sword in the clan forge, cold and calculating and expectant.

He’s only six when the little things about him start changing, drawing a greater divide between him and his siblings. His ears, which have always been a little  **odd** and small, grow pointy and a little longer than they should. His head aches and itches where bony stubs have begun to peak out among snowy hair, like the first growth of a stags horns. His brothers think this is, in a word, “AWESOME”. He’s less excited, it  **hurts** !

Because even at age six Tobirama is a genius, and he does what any genius would do; he goes to the clan medics. Yuuna is a little surprised to see him, he hates the stench of chemicals. Even worse now is the smell of blood from a recently returned patrol, and Tobirama scrunches his nose. His brothers all look very much green around the gills, and Tobirama turns his head away when his mouth waters.

Yuuna turns to him when Hashirama nudges him forward, and he twitches in discomfort but parts his hair for her to see the little bumps growing from his skull. The medi-nin gives him a long, slow look before turning and beconning for him to follow. “Just you.” His brothers shuffle nervously as Tobirama trails her out of the Infirmary.

Tobirama waits as asked when he is led to his father’s office. Yuuna returns a few sparse moments, trailing Butsuma, and shuts the shouji door with a modest clack of wood on wood behind them. His father is frowning, but not angry. He observes quietly when the medic parts his hair around the stubs and lifts it away from pointy ears that twitch when she brushes tickling fingers over them.

She shines a chakra light in his eyes, one at a time, before ordering him to remove his hakama and shirt. He glances at his father, uncertain but for a moment, but does as bidden when Butsuma narrows his eyes. Cold fingers prod along his spine, and there is a brief twinge of pain. Her fingers come away holding a small pearlescent scale, only the size of his thumb nail, which she hands to her Clan Head before moving to take her leave.

“He is ready. He must be fed frequently in order to grow as you desire. Plenty of calcium. Assassination missions should be perfect to achieve the results you seek.”

 

She leaves with a flutter of robes, and Butsuma slowly slides the screen shut behind her. When he turns to Tobirama there is a look in his eye that sends shivers up the boys spine. “Clothe yourself boy.” The pale child scurries to do as bidden, all to aware of the man shuffling through his drawers. Butsuma surfaces with a small wooden box, nondescript and a little dusty, which he sets on the table.

Tobirama seats himself when his father’s eyes flicker to the cushion opposite him, and folds his hands on his lap. Butsuma slides the lid of the box open, upends the contents on the table, and says “You are not my born son. You are not the offspring of any man or woman in this Clan. You are a tool that I have crafted for war, a monster to do my bidding, and this is the egg from which you hatched.”

On the table lie polished pieces of shell, storm cloud grey with white and red lightning-like stripes. Tobirama’s hands shake when he lifts the largest piece. It is the length of his forearm, its diameter one and again the size of his hand. The inside is white and perfectly smooth. He looks to his father, his Clan Head, the man who raised him, and hopes for a smile, laughter, anything that would indicate a joke.

Butsuma is not a humorous man, and he finds no comfort in cold brown eyes. Tobirama can feel the prickle of tears, and turns his gaze down to the shell in his lap. His shell. It is hard and cool against his fingertips, and entirely unfamiliar. He wants to run, crawl into a hole and cry, but obedience of this man keeps him seated.

He leaves the office with a box full of broken pieces and an unmarked scroll. His Clan Head had been very clear in his command that he study the old writings and breathe not a word of it to Butsumas sons. Tobirama had bowed, throat too tight for words, and left with orders that he is to return in a days time to receive his first mission.

He unrolls the scroll away from his sib- his leaders sons, in a quiet garden next to a small stream. The vellum is old and yellowed, the kanji faded. A sinuous dragons curls around the borders of the old writing, just as faded but still intricately beautiful in detail. He draws a deep breath and begins to read.

It’s two hours later, and his head is swimming with ‘mating rituals’ and ‘breeding seasons’ and ‘soul mates’. He knows what ‘ovoviviparous’ means, and what had followed that had sent him retching. “Carve the single egg from the belly of the beast while it yet draws breath” the scroll had said. Tobirama isn’t stupid, having a child cut from ones belly is fatal. Butsuma had murdered his birth parent, carved his unhatched egg from their womb and left them to bleed to death.He doesn’t sleep that night, spends is awake in bed cuddled by his Clan Leaders sons, lost in thought.

 

His first mission outside the compound is an unmitigated disaster. He returns home with the taste of his targets corpse in his mouth, cloying and sweet and addictive, and a new set of dagger sharp teeth growing from his gums. His armour is in pieces and there are tear tracts carved through the blood around his mouth, but Butsuma greets him with a cold smile. 

Tobirama shakes in his tattered clothes as he tells the Senju Clan Head how he had torn pieces off the politician before the corpse had cooled. The mans eyes slit with contentment when Tobirama sets the head of his first kill on the table, sans eyes and tongue. “You enjoyed it, did you not.” It’s not a question, and though there are fresh tears, there is no denial.

He had enjoyed it  **deeply** . Had relished stalking the man unseen, smuggled himself in as one of the mans illegal child bedmates. Had sat primly on the mans lap prior to crushing his windpipe between teeth now lost. Tobirama had bathed himself in the blood of his victim, only peripherally aware of his actions alongside an all consuming hunger for  **more more MORE** ! Had rolled his eyes in sick pleasure of warm muscle sliding down his throat.

Butsuma gives him a nod of approval when he tells the man there had been nothing left of the target but broken bones sucked dry of marrow.

He leaves with the residual tingle on his scalp where Butsuma had carded a proud hand through fluffy white locks stained red and matted with sticky blood. He bathes before he returns to his adopted siblings. Cleans the blood meticulously from his head and back where he had lain and napped alongside the bones of his first kill, lax and stuffed almost to the point of nausea.

They are curled up together, a warm pile of limbs that stirs when he closes the door. They welcome him with a lifted blanket, bleary and barely awake. He settles among them, presses a sensitive nose to their hair and takes deep lungfuls of their scents one at a time. Closes his eyes and relaxes into sleep to dream of fields of corpses, a full belly and his siblings faces among the piles of bones.

 

A year later, Kawarama is killed. He takes a blow for Hashirama’s emotional speech and puts Itama to bed with soothing petting. When his younger adopted sibling sleeps in his bed and the elder skips stones over the Nakano, he goes hunting. The Uchiha that he had smelled all over Kawarama’s corpse are out on patrol, and he leads them on a merry chase through the woods. He kills them when they are absolutely certain they have him cornered.  **Relishes** the look of frightened disgust in the face of the one he lets get away when he  **feasts** .

He returns to Itama that evening with a belly so full he can’t so much as look at food for the next two days. To Butsuma he brings the bloodied Uchiwa of his victims robes, the entire fan stained red. He is rewarded with a hand petting henged ears that flick at the touch. “You have done well. I am proud.”

Hashirama returns that evening, dry of tears and smelling of river and another person. Tobirama sniffs him from head to toe, accepting the crushing hug in exchange for the right to inspect the bumbling idiot from head to toe. Parts his lips to taste the foreign scent on his tongue. If this person so much as hurts a hair on Anijas head, he will have no trouble finding them and tearing them asunder.

 

Itama dies a month before Butsuma orders him to follow his last remaining sibling. A month he spends in the south, killing and eating every Hagoromo he comes across. He’s come to  **crave** human flesh and that perfect thrill that comes with stalking the most intelligent of prey. Has mastered luring them in and striking when they think they have him cornered. His clan avoids him, whispers of how he returns bathed in blood from missions whose targets are nothing more than bones stripped clean.

Following Hashirama to the river is literal childs’ play, and he almost kills the Uchiha on sight. Watches him with a watering mouth, drool falling from parted lips onto branches below as he lets the boys scent wash over his tongue. He stays long after his elder brother returns to the compound, tracks ‘Madara’s chakra signature to the gates of the Uchiha compound and into the main house.

Hashirama refuses to look at him when he presents his findings to Butsuma. Doesn’t sleep next to him that night, or any night that follows. He doesn’t  **understand** . He’s obeyed his Clan Head, he’s trying to keep his last precious person  **alive** . Why is Anija so angry with him?

The clash at the river is his first meeting with Izuna and Tajima Uchiha, the first time he sees them. He stares at the Uchiha passed their crossed blades, and Izuna very obviously recognizes him. He remains composed, no matter how his mouth fills with saliva and his blood sings with the thrill of adrenaline. This close he could pluck the Uchiha’s precious eyes right out of his skull. Tobirama likes eyes, they’re not too far off dango in texture and not as sweet. They leave the river without bloodshed, and Hashirama doesn’t speak to him for a month.


	2. Adolescence

Tobirama has reached That Age. As is traditional for all things in his life, it comes with a **great** **many complications**. Reading his Species Manual (as he’s taken to calling it) has him expecting certain developments. As has the long and painfully embarrassing ‘Breeding Talk’ that Butsuma puts him through, for which Hashirama is notably absent.

The first cockup presents itself at the most inconvenient time,  _ because life would be boring if everything didn’t go to shit at every opportunity _ . Anija, who hasn’t been the same since the River Incident, and his eldest cousin Touka accompany him on the mission. The parameters are simple, it’s only a retrieval.

Things take a sudden and gleeful turn for the worse when they run into an unmarked patrol of decidedly mediocre shinobi. They bear no clan sign and no discerning features or fighting styles.

Four assailants against their three man team, and Tobirama messes everything up. It’s very accidental and in his opinion a rather uncalled for overreaction.

The youngest Senju is half way through the signs for a Water Dragon when there’s a rumbling sort of tickling from somewhere in his midsection, and he’s not sure if he should shout or laugh. He’s eaten exactly  **nobody** in the last three and a half weeks, so  _ it can’t be that _ . There’s a shift in perception, and an all body  **ache** , and everything is a little too small.

 

The nin he’s fighting falls flat on his backside when Tobirama is suddenly pressed nose to forehead with him. The man flushes so thoroughly he goes almost purple, then pales so quickly he’s the colour of a corpse within less than a minute before his eyes roll back and he faints. All the fighting has stopped, his cousin and brother both turned to look at him.

“What?” Or at least that’s what he means to say. It comes out as a rough sort of coughing wheeze, and Hashirama’s colouration makes a break for ‘deathly pale’. Touka says nothing, doesn’t move and doesn’t blink. The remaining nin takes his opening and flees as though all the Tengu of Hell are after his soul.

“To-Tobirama? I-is that you?” Touka takes a tentative half step toward him, and his brother a full three steps away. He turns his head to look at her,  _ and that feels  _ **_wrong_ ** . The whole movement is longer than it should be, fluid and sinuous and with too much  **neck** . He opens his mouth for a typically scathing quip and she  **flinches** .

It’s that aborted move (Touka flinches for absolutely  **nothing** and  **nobody** ) that has  **Tobirama** stepping back. Or attempting to, because it soon becomes very clear that nothing is as it should be. He stumbles on legs that feel crooked, falling onto a side that feels too armoured and too lenghty, and lands with his face in the dirt.

 

His  **snout** . White and dog like and with long, flexible whiskers tipped in snowy fluff. And Tobirama will never admit it, but that is the first time since he’s been a babe that he  **screams** . Nobody will ever know what it really was, because the sound passes his lips as a roaring wail that startles Anija and Touka both. 

He wriggles backward, and it’s wriggling exactly. Flowing and serpentine and he feels like the lowest beetle grub. His movements are  **rushed** and  **frantic** and as coordinated as a drunk foal, and the trunk of a thick Sakura tree catches him unawares. He fades from consciousness in a shower of pink springtime petals fluttering to the ground.

 

Tobirama swims to awareness, opening his eyes and expecting the face of his Anija to match the cool healing chakra he feels on his forehead. He gets a stone faced Touka instead, Hashirama nowhere in sight. He hisses in pain when the ache behind his eyes becomes apparent, and his cousin is quick to withdraw soothing hands.

“Littlest Baby Cousin.”She sounds withdrawn. Defensive and cold and clinical. Tobirama rolls the eye that’s remained open to gaze upon her face, and her countenance matches her tone. He draws in a great loud breath, “Don’t speak”, and holds it.

“I… Don’t know what to say. It was so hard in the beginning to reconcile your face and the rumours. I didn’t believe them at first. But I had a… Call it a gut feeling if you must, that you were unwell. Why did you not come to me Littlest? Why did you push yourself to carry this burnen alone?”

 

He drags a smooth scaly chin across the dirt, crushing the cherry blossoms that send their scent digging into his nose. His urge to sneeze is overridden by the need to sniff, and Tobirama squeezes his eyelids shut. It does naught to quell the tears. Salty and heavy, the size of hailstones where they run down newly red lined cheeks. His throat  **squeezes** and  **aches** as his heart tries to force its way out through his mouth, and he chokes.

The sobs are loud and wheezing, great heaves torn form his foreign chest and Tobirama curls a long slender body around a ribcage under crushing pressure. There’s a high, keening whine full of sorrow that he doesn’t even register making. The youngest Senju curls up in to a twisting tight ball and cries himself to sleep as he had only done once before, when his only known father had declared him and adopted pet.

 

He is himself again when he wakes, the right length and texture for all his whole body feels as though it’s been turned inside out. His henge has collapsed, and his head lays in his cousin's lap. His antlers are just wide enough to fit over her hips, and her fingers tickle where they stroke the fluff on the very tips of long, pointed ears.

She’s gazing straight ahead, jaw moving in the way he knows means she’s chewing her cheek and withholding words. Hashirama is absent, and when Tobirama flexes his Chakra Sense he brushes up against the evergreen that is  **cool-hard-closed** in the Senju Compound, two days run away.

 

When they return, mission incomplete, Butsuma is waiting with his remaining son. Hashirama avoids his eyes and leans away when Tobirama approaches. He scowls, and next to his father the resemblance is uncanny. Butsuma spares him a small smirk as he leads the way inside, and Anija does not follow.

He and Touka seat themselves opposite the Clan Head, bowing under his gaze and keeping theirs on the table between them. The silence lengthens toward discomfort before Butsuma deems to break it. “Congratulations Tobirama. Hashirama had some interesting claims to make about your mission. Remove your henge.”

Touka twitches when he complies, but remains seated. Butsuma lifts a hand to becon him closer, and grasps Tobirama by the chin when he leans forward. His face is turned this way and that before he’s released. “Hmm. You’ve had your first change them. Younger than I expected. I’m glad... Old enough to breed now.” He frowns at those last words, eyes narrowing in distaste. “Keep that cock of yours to yourself. If I hear so much as a whisper of your mating, I’ll make sure you’re unable to sink yourself into a body ever again. Understood?”

 

Tobirama nods, mortified blush rising right to ears pressed firmly against his skull. Under the table, Touka presses her foot against his ankle, chakra  **annoyed-giggling-sad** . Butsuma rises, waving his hand when they make to rise as well. He moves quietly across the room, and comes to rest a hand on Tobirama’s shoulder.

Fingers drum on the muscle of his neck, and a thumb presses between the dips of his spine where they lay among thin white fuzz soft as ducks down. The other scrapes blunt fingernails against the bone of his antler and presses the pad of a finger to one of the points.

“The circumstances of this are, however, somewhat regrettable. Take care of witnesses Tobirama.”

Butsuma shifts between one second and the next, pins Touka to the table as Tobirama leaps to his feet. There is a kunai to the back of her neck by the time the eldest kicks the table away. Touka’s head is pulled back by her topknot to expose her throat to Tobirama, and Butsuma stares straight into thin red irises as he says “No witnesses.”

 

The youngest Senju shakes with indecision and Butsuma lifts the kunai, poised to cut Touka’s spinal cord. Tobirama leaps across the space between them, shivering and flexng in a way he feels he will probably never get used to.

He’s thrown his Clan head across the room and curled around his cousin before he can think twice. Butsuma narrows his eyes and  **growls** , and Tobirama returns the favour. The clatter of sandals echoes down the hall as Tobirama presses Touka into the nearest corner and grips the wall the claws of his legs. His belly is turned to press her between the wood of the wall and soft, smooth scales.

Butsuma snorts at him, and Tobirama’s brain catches up with his body with the realisation of  _ he’s cornered but his precious person is safe _ . His Clan Head  **laughs** as realisation dawns in wine red eyes, just before he charges. The shouji door clatters straight off its hinges as it’s thrown open.

 

Hashirama’s eyes look as though they’re doing their absolute  **best** to leap right out of his head and it’s  **not helping** . Touka manages to ram a table leg though the chest of his assailant as Butsuma grips him by the horns and attempts to remove his head like that of a fish. His clan head, the man who raised him, dies with hate in his eyes and a scowl on his face.

Anija storms down on them, Chakra  **angry-kill you-kill you-KILL YOU** and for the first time in his life Tobirama is afraid of Anija. This time it’s Touka who presses him into the corner, folding and twisting his body. “Hashirama.” She wields the table leg like a tanto, stance set in defence. “What in  **ALL FUCKING NINE HELLS DID YOU DO** ?”

 

They leave the Main House and their new Clan Head with eleven scrolls containing all of Tobirama’s worldly goods, the majority of which is notes and unstable research… things. Touka clears her guest room of weapons in progress and unrolls a fuuton, which Tobirama flops onto sans snout and tail but with what feels like a bad case of spinal compression. She sits by his side and runs soft healing chakra over his back to relieve the ache. 

“Littlest Baby Cousin, you can tell me anything and stay as long as you like; under the condition that there will be  **no consuming of people** . Uchiha or otherwise. On the bright side though, now your life has been extended by at least twenty years by your not eating his cooking anymore.”

“I cook, actually.”

“Ah. Subclause: no cooking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm entirely open to any questions you may have.  
> Just so we've all got the same thing in mind, Tobirama is white in colour, slender and about eight meters long with plenty growing to do.
> 
> Here's a link to a drawing I've done for this with Tobirama fully grown. He's about half that size now.  
> https://artbythedarkside.tumblr.com/image/180992601443


	3. Hormones

Puberty is… mostly disgusting so far, and Tobirama is thoroughly disillusioned about any ‘joys’ of growing up. He’s fifteen, going through that awkward growth spurt where everything is just a little too long and lanky for everything else, and experiencing those… urges. He’s not enjoying them.

Touka, the evil hag, is  **relishing** his discomfort. His day begins with “Rising and shining” and pointed stares at his groin, and a very thorough attempt at suffocating himself. As is the natural order of things, life joins in the fun and makes it’s best attempt at embarrassing him into an early grave.

It begins in autumn when his cousin is fourteen days away from her next monthly bleeding. He wakes to the most enticing of scents tickling the inside of his nose, and a burning warm ache between his legs. He gives in to instincts, hips moving of their own volition to provide delicious friction. He whimpers, back arching and hands fisting in the sheets as wondrous  **ecstasy** curls his toes and crosses his eyes behind lids firmly closed.

“My sheets, Littlest.” Flutters his eyes open just in time for him to witness a raised brow when he shivers, a sigh that rumbles past teeth bared in a scowl of pleasure as warmth spills between his legs. When he drags his head up from where he’s buried it in his pillow. She rolls her eyes and seats herself alongside his fuuton.

He peeks at her through one eye, and turns as red as his markings when she levels the driest look over her shoulder. Hiding in his bedding is  **not admitting defeat** , it’s  **self preservation** .

 

“Oh come now Littlest, it’s only natural for you to want certain things. Don’t try and strangle yourself.”

“Mphsembrrsng.”

“Don’t eat the sheets. Talk to me. I said anything and I meant it. It can hardly be as bad as that Woodheaded twit dragging me into the pleasure district and asking me what all the toys are for.”

She pets his ears, unhenged because she’d demanded that he be ‘himself’ around the house. It’s her favourite way of mocking and consoling him. He bats her hand away when she purposefully tickles them till they flick and Tobirama has to rub them to get rid of the annoyance. Touka takes him gently by the chin and turns his head to bring his gaze to meet hers.

“You… Ehem… You smell good.”

“Yes, Dearest Littlest, it’s called a  **bath** cousin. You’ll be taking one soon.  **Before** the sheets stain.”

“I’m laughing on the inside. My sides have split with the hilarity of  **that joke** .”

“Don’t snark cousin, I’m not awake enough to appreciate it.”

“All humor aside, that’s not what I’m speaking of. It’s almost more a feeling than a scent. It’s-my head is-it does things.  **Is** doing things to me.”

 

He’s mumbling the last few words, deathly  **ashamed** .  _ This is worse than eating people _ . He startles when she thumps a hand, with  **far** too much force, between his shoulder blades. He glances up to find her countenance earnest and soft with empathy. Touka flicks his nose when he tries to avoid her gaze. “You’ve grown, Littlest. It’s not something to be ashamed of, sort of to be expected actually. Your body wants sex, and maybe who you are just… compounds your urges. I’m at my most fertile today, perhaps it has an effect on you.”

He’s rolling into a ball in discomfort, but it makes a very straight forward sort of sense. Touka rubs the ever lengthening fuzz running down his back. He curls a little tighter, entirely  **done** with the stickiness between his legs, plastering rough fabric to parts of him that should really have gone back to normal by now.

 

Autumn, it seems, is his breeding season. The downy velvet peels from the stags antlers, and they’re making mating calls and chasing does and Tobirama is…  **lonely** . He’s the only dragon around for thousands of miles, he’s **looked** .

It’s made all the worse by the smells of fertility that he gets wonderful wafts of. Touka looks at him with a deep sort of sad regret, and Hashirama doesn’t look at him at all. The clan at large avoids him, shying away from his presence and not meeting his eyes. 

He catches them talking sometimes, ears far more sensitive even though they’re henged away when he leaves the house. His tear stripes go too when one of the elders hint at him carrying Uchiha blood. Touka dyes all their washing neon green in return, but the damage has been done.

 

He’s out hunting when he’s found by someone he truly avoids thinking about. He’s felt Madara coming for miles, of course he has. Tobirama is stubborn by nature, and gifted with pettiness in  **spades** , he’ll not give up a perfectly good meal just to move away. This had been the biggest, loudest stag he could find.

Entirely confident that he’s unrecognizable in this scaly hide of white and red, he only glances up at the flutter of purple robes on the edge of his clearing. He snarls because this is  **his** catch, coiling a little tighter around the stags rib cage. The animals last breath hisses out of the windpipe crushed in Tobirama’s jaws.

He almost lets go when the Uchiha approaches within his line of sight and  **bows** . It’s formal and so low Madara bends nearly in half. Tobirama resolves his discomfort at being treated with such unadulterated  **reverence** by flexing and unraveling himself, and presents Madara with a back armored in thick scales. 

He feels the Uchiha approach,  **hears** him, and knows it’s because Madara wants him to. He growls, rumbling and low because that’s more than close enough and Madara will be getting a whipping with his tail if he comes any closer. For all the other can’t recognise his chakra, as distorted as it is in this form, the man is still an Uchiha and the enemy of his adopted clan. Anijas rival, though not his equal if Hashirama were to stop wailing for a minute and fight him seriously.

 

He whirls when Madara darts forward and plucks at his tail. The slight pinch of one of his scales makes him snarl and bear down on the stupid arrogant fuck, and halts mid strike when the man submits. It’s not verbal, but it’s still the equivalent to a cat rolling to show it’s belly. His eyes are downcast, focused on long and curved sicles on the ends of Tobirama’s fingers.  **Good** , he’ll do well to remember that robes are a flimsy excuse for protection against sharp claws. 

“My apologies,  Pērubīsuto. It was not my intention to cause pain.”  _ White Beast _ . A fitting name. Tobirama cannot resist snarling and pressing Madaras cheek with a snout soaked in blood, just to make himself clear.

Impulse grips him and he nips at the dark obi holding robes closed because he’s a little childish and not afraid to admit it.  _ Fair compensation for pulling out my scale as though I were some tame pigeon _ , and the flailing and scrambling to get away when the dark cloth falls open  **almost** makes him laugh. Madara flees his sight with leaf litter dusted generously over his backside, one hand holding his robes closed against the chill.

 

Tobirama takes a deep breath with all the intention to let it out as an aggrieved sigh before going back to his food and just... **stops** . Red pupils dilate and Tobirama drops the obi as his jaw falls open.  _ Uchiha Madara smells good,  _ **_really good_ ** . The Senju whirls and buries his snout into bloodied fur, suddenly all too aware that his genitals are perfectly functional as he is now and  **disgusted** by it.

He tears angrily into flesh, furious at his bodies reaction and the Uchiha for exposing it. He vows to  **hate** Madara and his ‘urges’ from that moment on until he passes from this world. How  **dare** his body react to an enemies scent as though it were the most enticing perfume. How could this enemy smell better than any other fertile female he’s smelled all season?!

The stag is consumed within hours with great relish. Skin and muscle alike are meticulously shredded by claws and teeth, and when bones don’t hold up against his jaws they’re eaten too. Tobirama returns to the compound wearing clothes stained by blood he’d not bothered to wash from his bare skin after Changing, narrow eyed and angry with a purple obi tucked away in his kunai pouch.

 

Touka doesn’t laugh, though for once he’d prefer she did. They sit at the kotatsu, the younger Senju scrubbed and scabbed from where he’d been too rough in his bathing. He feels betrayed and  **violated** , for all it was only a scale and Madara’s obi had been entirely his own doing. He doesn’t tell his cousin that he’s kept it. Had taken great big gulping breaths of the mans scent and gone to the wet room achingly aroused.  **Hates** himself for it.

Touka sits across from him, pushing the last three rice grains around in her bowl. Tobirama stares into his tea and contemplates inhaling it every time his stupid lizard brain strays to pale skin and and dark hair and  **that prat still has the scale he stole** ! Bits of ceramic scatter across the table and the tea splashes across his lap, scalding against already pink skin. Touka levels him with grey eyes rendered black by the shadow of frowning brows, and he gets up to fetch a rag without thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you have questions.


	4. A Collector

Tobirama, they discover, is very much Suiton natured. In all possible senses of the word. He spends at least half an hour after the last of the days training ensconced in a steaming hot bath, content to look over all manner of jutsu and Clan matters- which Hashirama is still under the impression Touka is doing. There is in fact a slender wooden box containing a  **calligraphy set** among Toukas’ bath oils, that keeps reappearing no matter  **how many times** she returns it to Tobirama’s desk.

Today they’ve reaffirmed that discovery; even as a dragon, Tobirama  **relishes** water. He is most content to lie in this onsen until the meat broils off his bones. It’s not that he’s cold blooded, he just enjoys the warmth. Touka has been relegated to pillow duty, his head resting on her crossed legs. She’s happy to scratch under his chin and pet behind his ears, eyes closed and breathing slow.

The cousins are alone in the wilderness, content to share the peace and and quiet between them until they return to the Compound. Tobirama wills one eye to open and lazily sweeps it over the rocky edges of the pool. His ears flick forward and he slowly lifts his head from the water. Touka grumbles but doesn’t move as Tobirama brings a rear paw about one and a half times the size of a dinner plate -still somewhat too big for him with pink pads of gripping hairs- to rest on her thigh. 

He brings a whisker forward, gently nudges the glittery black rock over and- oh, it bears the likeness of a shell on its broken half- it’s  **pretty** .  _ That’s mine now, I’m keeping it _ . The whisker nudges it between his teeth, and he dips his head into the water to wash his find clean. It looks even prettier wet, the obsidian shining with the smallest flecks of gold where it catches the sun- it’s  **perfect** . Even if he doesn’t know what to do with it other than  **mine** and  **keep safe** .

 

That is the start of his Collection, the pretty little fossil that will always be the crowning jewel for all it’s not the shiniest or the biggest of his eclectic scattering of… things. They are  **his** , and he growls Anija away from across the room when Hashirama comes to visit him for the first time in six months. Tobirama only half listens when their Clan Head informs them that the official story for Butsuma’s death is ‘assassination by table leg’, more concerned with inspecting his little box of treasures to make sure the great bumbling oath hasn’t broken anything.

Tobirama lays loving fingers over the contents of his little unmarked chest. There’s not much in it, and little of value to anyone but him. Itama’s first blunt practice kunai and Kawarama’s headband. His shell is in there too; it carried him into this world for all it caused him so much pain, right next to the first branch Anija had ever gown. The fossil is there too, nestled among perfectly smooth pebbles in all manner of colours and shimmering fabrics- all dark blues and purples and blacks. 

The remainder of the box inhabitants consists of scrolls- random, inane things like precious metal transmutation jutsus and poetry- and a leather bound book. The first and only one he’s ever found. The book is unused, vellum pages creamy white blank spaces- but so  **soft** . He sniffs it too, sometimes- because Touka is lying when she tells him the glue makes him dopey and cuddly. He’s perfectly capable of cuddling her sobre, which is another thing they’ve discovered he likes.

 

It had taken him until mid winter to feel comfortable enough to approach her, and even then all he’d done was sit next to her at the kotatsu for days on end. She’d given him sideways glances, and Tobirama had been too much of a shinobi to squirm under her gaze, though he’d wanted to. The younger Senju had had to gently butt his head against her shoulder before she’d  **finally** understood.

Now they have a routine of sorts. After every bath he will lie over her lap, first as a boy and then as a dragon, and she will comb his mane. He’d frowned at her when she wouldn’t discard the hairs that came loose, he’s not some Angora rabbit to be brushed for fur- but she’d stopped her brushing when he’d complained and he’d  **very quickly** retracted his words.

That’s where they are now, splayed on the blanket of the kotatsu with Tobirama wearing only a yukata shrugged off his shoulders, opposite a very confused looking Hashirama.

“Time to change Littlest.”

“Touka I think I should probably-”

“Sit down, Hashirama. You’re going absolutely nowhere. This is important.”

“I really think I could do without this.”

“Shut up Chopsticks, you  **will** stay and you  **will** watch. Tobira, change.”

 

Tobirama frowns, ears flicking back, and even that has Anija squirming. He looks at his Clan Head, and then at his cousin. Touka’s grey eyes are steely and unyielding, but not cold. He knows exactly **why** she’s doing this, knows just how angry she is at Hashirama for pushing him away because of what he is- who, she keeps reminding him,  **who** . She lifts a sharp brow, tilts her head, and he’s going to  **suffer** if he doesn’t comply.

He undoes the obi of his yukata, light blue silk bordering on grey and patterned with tiny scales embroidered in white. Hashirama wriggles in his seat and Touka turns both eyes on him, narrow and cool- and Anija remains seated. He turns to look at them when Touka gives a warning hum, and umber brown eyes flecked with gold and green meet Tobirama’s. The youngest Senju feels very much like he did during his first mission, nervousness twisting his gut into heavy knots.

The Change is easier now, coming a little more willingly and with a little less pain. It feels like stretching after an uncomfortable nights sleep, and his skin ripples and stretches to his will. When red eyes blink open his chest is resting on Touka’s lap, neck arched graceful and swan like until his head- almost the size of her torso- hovers an arms length above the table.

 

Hashirama squeaks a little when Tobirama moves to face him, and the younger Senju looks away with a burning chest as his head comes to rest on the kotatsu. “Pet his ears.” And Hashirama squirms and whines like a child faced with a particularly slimy and disgusting invertebrate. “Chopsticks, grow a gods damned spine and  **Pet** . **His** . **Ears** .”

This time it’s Touka growling, and Anijas hand trembles when it reaches out. Tobirama shifts in discomfort as it nears, and his Evil Witch of a cousin grasps a tine -gently but firmly- as Hashirama’s hand flashes away. She rubs strong fingers into the mane at the back of his skull and glares at his elder until that hand reappears. Tobirama is well aware that he too is trembling, and squeezes wine red eyes tightly shut as fingers near his head.

He can’t help but bare teeth and grumble in a grimmance-both shocked and relieved when the pain he’d expected doesn’t come- as the velvety soft white hair along the tops of his ears is held gently between Hashirama’s trembling digits. There’s a great gusty sigh from the two Senju brothers when nothing else happens, and tanned fingers rub a little firmer. The evening ends with Hashirama slowly carding a hand through the mane between Tobirama’s shoulders, and the fact that Tobirama had growled at him when it made for the back of his neck unspoken of.  _ Not there yet, too vulnerable _ ; heard but not said.

 

It’s spring again. The last of the cherry blossoms have given way to soft green buds, and it’s Tobirama’s birthday. There is no grand celebration, no party or fanfare for the White Senju Demon. Touka’s house it quiet, and the only guest among its regular inhabitants is the Clan Head.

Hashirama presents his gift first, a new box for his treasures grown of Mokuton and humming softly with the mans chakra. It’s the length of his fuuton and about half as wide, woven of rough branches and totally smooth on the inside. Anija smiles at him when he hands it over, not large or half as warm as any of his other expressions but Tobirama’s cheeks heat at the first smile Hashirama has directed at him since Butsuma’s death.

Touka is the next to present her gift, wrapped in lightning white silk that lines the box the moment he unravels it. Within is a set of armour, a little big and no doubt crafted with a grown man in mind. He lays all the pieces of steel coated ceramic wrapped in ocean blue leather out neatly side by side, fingers soft and hesitant with reverence at such a well crafted gift. 

At the very bottom, curled into the breast plate, rests a magnificent white fur collar. Tobirama recognises it immediately as his own sheddings, saved from all of Touka’s meticulous brushing. She gifts him a soft smile when he looks at her with eyes that may be a little wet. “I never want you to feel as though you’re hiding who you are.”  **Who** , not  **what** .


	5. Like Him and Not

As is traditional, Tobirama’s greatest peak in life so far is followed very closely by the deepest chasm. He’s pressed into a corner of a cliff- one of the many in Kumo no Kuni-  _ I  _ **_hate_ ** _ Cloud Country _ **,** surrounded on all sides by nin of some obscure clan and deathly low on chakra. Because he is a firm believer in squirting the lemons life gives him in people’s eyes, he pulls his trump card. 

Only, when his clothes tear off his body- not his armour, thankfully, though this has to be the worst recon mission ever- as he slides between one form and the next, the Kumo nin shout in triumph even as he bares razor sharp teeth at them.  **Not good** . The first nin to make for him with ropes meets a very unpleasant end when Tobirama holds his shin to the ground with one hind paw, grips him by the shoulder and  **twists** . 

There’s a sickening crunch and a loud splatter as his torso is corkscrewed straight off his legs, and Tobirama hurls the halves at the remaining shinobi. Two more and meet their deaths before there’s the deep rumble of a Doton and Tobirama turns his head in time to see the boulder that knocks him unconscious.

 

He wakes to chains and a pounding concussion. Lifting his head is proved impossible by a heavy iron collar coated in seals. Bending enough to see them reveals two things- the seals are so deeply entwined with his chakra network in this form that changing back  **will** kill him, and he’s not alone. The shinobi bears three black bars on a face of dark skin, deep blue eyes glittering under a fringe of straw blonde hair.

“Finally awake, Bebīsutōmu. Do you have any idea how long we’ve been looking for another of your kind; and you are perfect- old enough to breed too young to rage properly. Let’s just hope she doesn’t kill you, it’s already bad enough that being rejected by her soulmate has left her no more than a mindless beast.”

His captor disappears as a smooth Doton Wall rises up between them. Tobirama is left in darkness for a moment before the opposite wall of the cave collapses, and his nose meets  **festering** - **hurt** - **angry** - **female** . Bile rises in his throat, and the Senju only just manages to hold on to his stomach acid. Slip pupils grow rapidly to take in more light, and his vision clears to reveal a large cavern.

Under the stomach churning odour is that of death and decay, whose origin he deems to be the rotting corpses littering the ground. Bioluminescent moss reveals a flicker of movement, and Tobirama turns his muzzled head. In the deepest shadows of the cave, a long body jolts as though waking from sleep. He can’t make out her colours beyond a murky brown, distorted as they are by green light when she steps toward him.

She’s  **huge** . At least four times his size, taller at the shoulder than a grown horse and at least twenty five meters long. And she’s  **hideous** . Her horns, as thick around at the base as his foreleg, are both broken into jagged stumps. An oozing wound where her right eye and ear should be. Worst of all she smells…  **wrong** .

It’s not the flesh that’s rotting off her head, not the old wounds on a broken tail that she seems to have picked at until they bleed. It’s not even her breath- which is truly appalling, he can smell it from here- or even where she’s torn out clotted hair from her matted mane to leave great dripping pustules that leak down her back. She smells  **unstable** . 

Her head swings right and she gazes at him through an eye half blind with a cataract. Her whiskers twitch and jerk, bitten off stumps that they are, and she takes a step toward him. Tobirama  **balks** , because her paw is damn near the size of his head.

 

She moves slowly, almost slithering over rotting corpses that crack under her weight. Tobirama does his best to wriggle backwards, but his collar is welded to the floor and catches on his horns. Her neck arches but her head remains level with his own,  **testing** , probing to see if he will attempt to prove dominance or attack. As if he’d do something so stupid as to aggravate her when his head is in the perfect position to be stepped on. 

Her tongue slides out of her mouth- and this close he can see that she’s ground her teeth down to stumps in gums turned black by infection- and she slides it along the side of his face. It’s a disgusting parody of an intimate and affectionate display, and he only just manages to stop himself from whining like some  **pup** . Her eye is almost closed, and Tobirama is well aware her mind is somewhere else as that reeking tongue of hers slithers under his lips no matter how tightly he closes them.

She rubs her body along his, smearing yellow and red on white scales and  **purrs** , scratchy and halting and wet with phlegm. Tobirama thrashes when she forces him onto his back. Makes muffled whines and growls that sound pathetic even to him when her nose wanders between legs he tries desperately to close. 

Scrabbles when she begins to lick him there, coaxes his member to hardness and out of its sheath for her, and feels  **weak** when he can’t pull away. Feels like the most pathetic male creature to ever walk the earth when he can’t move out from under her. Tobirama cries when he first slides into her- great heaving sobs that pull his lips up around the muzzle even as she lets out a gurgled sigh and licks at his snout. When his first climax spills into her, he howls a **scream** that echoes through the cave and he can swear he sees blue eyes watching him.

 

She mates him several times a day, every day for the next week. He gets no food or water and his muzzle remains bound closed. Tobirama cries until his eyes are dry and scratchy, and heaves dry sobs as she fucks him again and again until his cock is tender and sore and probably a spectacular shade of red. He’s sick until his stomach has no more acid left to give, and he wonders if Touka will find him so far from home. Perhaps it’s best if she didn’t, he’d rather she wouldn’t see him like this- sanity sliding through his fingers.

It’s a week later when her smell changes, clear to him from where he lies trapped against her side. Tucked against belly scales scarred jagged as though he were her lover, as though she hadn’t raped him until his cock was raw and bleeding. He’s doing his best to stave off any infection, licking it clean as best he can when she lets him have a moment. Lack of sustenance has him a little delirious, but he  **knows** that smell. Knows it as he knows the feel of Touka’s fingers brushing his fur, knows it as he knows the comfort of water on skin and scales. A deep, cell level, primal sort of knowing. 

She’s  **gravid** . She’s  **pregnant** with  **his offspring** \- and panic washes his mind blank. He tears the muzzle off with a hind paw between one breath and the next, uncaring that he breaks a tooth and cuts his gums on sharp claws. His chest swells with a deep, hot, crackling anger when she attacks him. Tobirama kicks at her belly, intent to gouge the eggs from her body and  **crush them** . She’s  **stolen** from him, taken something precious and twisted it into something  **rotten** and ugly. 

 

The fight isn’t easy, trapped as he is. But the Senju is nothing if not strong, stubborn to a fault and  **he will kill her** . Fury pulls his bleeding lips back from his teeth. The bitch rears her head, rotting jaws open wide as she cranes her head back to strike- chakra surges past his collar, blowing the metal into pieces with a loud  **clang** . Power rushes up his throat, scorching and burning and  **painful** in its intensity. Tobirama opens his mouth wide and flattens his tongue on instinct, half afraid he’s about to throw up blood.

Water. Water and lightning, a storm in liquid form rushing in a great jet past teeth that glitter red with blood. He aims it right at the roof of her mouth, and doesn’t stop until electricity and boiling hot water tear a hole through her skull and splash red against the cave walls. He  **watches** the life leave that cloudy eye. Her jaw drops open, slack on torn ligaments, and her head wavers left and right before it slowly topples to the ground. 

He  **tears** her belly open. Digs long, curved claws into her womb and rips it right out. Within he can see the oval shapes of two eggs, siblings, perhaps even twins. Still soft and leathery, barely developed. Tobirama tears those apart too. Stands in a mess of yolk and blood and clear fluid and sheds slow tears as he roars victory.

 

When the wall of the cave behind the bars rumbles open for blue eyes, Tobirama turns to meet them with his own furious red. He presses his bleeding muzzle to the bars and spits his anger at the immoral fuck until the water and lightning blisters his tongue. The Kumo shinobi dodges the brunt of it, but Tobirama still manages to take most of his arm.

“You’re  **never** leaving that cave! I will make it your  **tomb** !” It’s spat in his face, and Tobirama snaps his jaw and growls. If he’s dying here, so be it. This beast will never have his blood to turn to weapons. If Tobirama is to die, he will make sure he does so as the last of his line. The walls rumble closed, and the Senju is left alone with the corpse of his rapist and the leathery shells of his unborn children.

He curls up as far away from them as he can get, tired and faint and  **dirty** inside. His tongue is badly blistered, and licking blood from his cock is unbearably painful but he does it anyway. He wants to  **clean** , and rolling in the dirt gets the blood and puss from his scales. Tobirama goes to sleep feeling filthy in a way he’s worried no bath will cure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Kumo shinobi calls him "Little Storm", for his dominant Suiton affinity and secondary Raiton affinity.


	6. Safe and Sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the last chapter was very heavy and contained a lot of disturbing material that some of you may have found difficult to bear, but it's served its purpose. There will be no more rape for this story, and the trauma has served its purpose. I'm aware I may have lost some of you, but it had to be done.

He’s starving. So weak he can barely move, his ribs bruised by resting on them. Tempted by the bones of corpses and held back by a promise of something important to someone special. He can’t remember who, or why; only ‘not food’. He can’t remember dig up much else, barely conscious as he is. His mouth is dry too, and there’s no liquid water to soothe his aching tongue.

The walls rumble, and he hisses the loudest warning he can manage. He’s been dreaming of blue eyes and waking  **angry** . “Tobirama!” That’s his name, he almost forgot. A womans' voice, loud and urgent and it hurts his ears. A clatter of hasty feet over rubble and bone. “Littlest Cousin, open your eyes.” Softer but no less panicked. Something wet falls on his face and he licks it up- salty, not good to drink. There’s a gasp and his head is lifted and turned. He growls at her, because he doesn’t like female things and it  **hurts** to move.

“What have they done to you… Your tongue, Littlest… Your teeth are all lose…” Cool hands lift his lips and he hisses because that’s painful too, and something wriggles in his gums before it disappears. He hears water, and the sound alone drags a pathetically dry whine out of his throat. She makes a soothing shushing noise, and liquid dribbles slowly into his mouth.

Swallowing is difficult, but it brings relief to his parched throat. The woman rocks him. Slowly and gently and more salty water drips onto his muzzle. She’s shaking, and for a moment he wonders why; he’s no threat so weak. Then fingers ghost over his ears, and bury themselves in the thickness of his mane just behind his head-  **Touka** . Her name is Touka and he is  **safe** . He passes out between one realization and the next.

 

There’s water around him when he comes to again. Water over his body and smooth pebbles under his head. The Nakano is slow flowing, soothing and supporting and it’s just a little easier to move his head and take a long slow drink. Touka is beside him, kneeling in the water and rubbing slowly at his skin. Her hands come away shimmering with shed scales, set lose by stress. Her eyes are red when she turns to look at him, the skin underneath bruised dark by lack of sleep.

Touka lifts a shaking hand, running soft and reverent fingers over his snout. They catch on the scabs left by the muzzle during his imprisonment. She draws a slow, shuddering breath. “I’m so, so sorry Littlest. I’m sorry I took so long. Sorry for-” she sniffs and sobs, and Tobirama halts her speech by nosing her onto her back.

She complies, rolls easily under him and he tramps down on the part of him that wants to  **hurt** \-  _ so submissive, an easy kill _ \- and presses his throat to her chest. Rubs it back and forth, shedding glittering white scales on her and covering her in his scent. His aching body moves to curl around her,  **mine** .  _ Mine, all mine, all mine alone to love and keep safe _ .

It’s comforting and deeply possessive, and his insides curl with affection and  **rightness** at the thought. The new crowning jewel of his collection, and he can’t help but roll all over her like an affectionate cat. Tobirama pushes her this way and that, uses teeth to strip to her undergarments and rubbing some more.

Touka laughs throughout, entirely unaffected by sharp teeth and claws of such a broken creature so close to her bare skin. Tobirama will not harm her, would rather break all the bones in his body  **himself** before laying a hand on his most precious of possessions. They roll together in the water, two cousins, two  **siblings** in all the ways that matter.

 

When they’ve had their fill of affection and curl up to lie together on the riverbank, it soon becomes painfully obvious how much Tobirama has suffered. The stones are littered with shed scales that glitter in the light of a new dawn, and he is frightfully thin against Touka’s back. She traces his rib cage with a hand, fingers trailing in the deep grooves between bones. When she runs her fingers through his mane, no longer brown though still tangled and matted, they come away with great clumps of hair. 

Tobirama is prodded gently awake from his state of content dozing by the pull of a comb on his fur. “Shh, idiot cousin. Stay still, let me help you.” She raps him lightly on the snout when he tries to raise his head, and Tobirama misses how her eyes glisten with unshed tears when his muscles tremble with effort. Instead he tucks his head against her legs, lids sliding closed over slightly glazed red eyes.

Her grooming is meticulous, and the younger Senju is entirely content to let himself be pushed every which way. He hardly hears her gasp of shock, half asleep as he is. Her hands brush down his belly and between his legs- and  **that** has him up and growling, her arm wrapped in his whisker and his curled lips centimeters away from her own before he can think.

“Tobira, it’s okay. It’s just me, Littlest. I’m not going to hurt you.” Her grey eyes are soft and worn and open, and she pets his thighs slowly when they part and his whisker slides loose. Tobirama is  **mortified** when she reaches for the opening of his sheath, scales on his cheeks bristling in a blush. Touka moves slowly, fingers glowing green as she gently pulls his cock from its bleeding sheath.

“This is going to sting Littlest, but I have to clean this.” He hisses when she pours water over the scabs, the liquid cool against the burning hot skin. Touka runs healing hands over the flesh that, cut and bruised by his ordeals. Tobirama is aware that she knows he was raped. The broken eggs and rotting corpse had given him away, but he is also utterly confident that he will receive no mockery from her. No judgement, only warm and careful care. 

She snorts when Tobirama whines at her, member twitching under trailing hands despite his best efforts. “Oh come now cousin, none of that. You’re sensitive here, it’s perfectly fine to react to touch.” His annoyed huff scatters pebbles away from where he’d buried his head among them, cheeks burning and itching in a prickly blush. He  **does** feel better though. His cock had been a terrible hot ache, infection thankfully staved off by his strong immune system but still rubbed raw by every movement.

 

Touka nurses him on the banks of the Naka River for a week. They’re not in Senju territory yet, and quite a distance away from the Uchiha borders. She’d fed him stew first, meat boiled soft for hours until it was barely held together, mindful of overwhelming a belly that had been empty for almost a month.

Not that he would be able to bite properly anyway.  _ Teeth lost to stress _ . They’d fallen out one by one, dropped right out of his gums, and his new set is only just peeking through. He’s glad,  _ it seems that they’re disposable and perfectly replaceable _ . The new ones are a little bigger, he can tell already. By the time she deems him fit for solid meat they’re all half way out. Biting feels  **good** . It relieves the itch of growth from his tingling gums, and he’s content to gnaw on the bones of the tiny doe she brings him.

Tobirama is quick to regain the weight he’d lost, and even quicker to go beyond that. It’s their third week together, and he’s finally strong enough to move about properly. He takes prey every second day, instincts shouting at him to bulk up. It’s a day before they leave the compound when he sheds his old skin completely, rendered tight and itchy as he’d grown.

Touka takes an odd sort of perfectionists joy from peeling his old, dull armor away. They watch it float to the middle of the river, where it is immediately set upon by the resident carp. Tobirama stretches and rubs his shoulder against Touka’s chest, within easy reach now that he is the height of a small pony instead of a large dog. Tobirama returns to human form for the first time in two months, held safe in his cousins arms. He lets it slide when she promptly dresses him an a garish pink kimono patterned with white blossoms.

 

Hashirama, whose chakra he’d sensed as  **worried** - **lonely** - **sad** during his month of recovery, seems to be having a bit of a religious experience. Tobirama is being crushed by the mans thick arms, unable to voice protests at the teary kisses being pressed wherever Anija can reach. Touka is laughing at him, but she’s not stopped holding his hand since they returned home early that afternoon.

“Oh Tobira- I was so-” Hashirama chokes on a particularly wet sob, and buries his face in snowy white hair. The younger Senju wriggles in his arms, squirming in an attempt to free himself when his elder drags him into the mans bedroom and collapses onto the fuuton. Touka lands on top of them with a gleeful elbow to Hashirama’s midriff. Tobirama sniffs and wrinkles his nose when he’s finally let go, but doesn’t get up to leave. He falls asleep in his Anija’s bed for the first time since he was a little boy, sandwiched between the two older Senju who remain awake to guard him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I forgiven?


	7. Found You

Tobirama is eighteen when the Uchiha and the Senju clash in full force. It’s the first time his armor sees a propper battle, and he’s a little eager to test the knot he’s designed. Today is also the first time he’s employing Hiraishin as anything other than a way to scare his brother- his perfect stern scowl and sudden appearances had been  **perfect** for catching Hashirama in bed with lovers that don’t meet his standards. It’s probably why Anija has yet to marry despite the urging of the Elders, but Tobirama doesn’t care. Until there’s a suitable mate available for his brother, Hashirama is  **his** .

Today is also incidentally the first time he’s seeing either of the Uchiha brothers. Izuna looks much the same- hair a little longer, less fat on his slightly chubby cheeks but otherwise still very much the needling little Weasel Tobirama remembers him to be. Except- except  **that** . His stolen scale, a necklace around Izuna’s neck, and Tobirama bristles with fury. He’ll be taking that  **back** ,  _ fuck you very much _ . Touka rubs their shoulders together, having clearly heard his angry growl, and laughs when she sees the glittering white speck among indigo.

Hashirama is the first to engage, breaking off toward Madara- who Tobirama dutifully ignores. His brother begins the battle with loud wailing pleading for peace, and the Uchiha with equally loud and fervent cursing denials in return. Tobirama turns his focus on Izuna, single minded and studious. Today he’s going to have fun getting rid of the little pest. 

 

It’s remarkably easy to fall back into the patterns of battle. Countering each of Izuna’s moves with a practiced ease that seems to incense the Uchiha.  _ Good, anger makes you clumsy _ . Tobirama keeps a whether eye- so to speak- on the chakra signatures around him, tracking the movement of friend and foe alike. Avoiding the Sharingan like this is child’s play, he certainly doesn’t  **need** to see to fight.

When Izuna begins moves through the first hand signs of the Grand Fireball Technique, Tobirama is already half way through the longer sequence for a Water Dragon. His timing is perfect, and his dragon takes the flames in a blast of hissing steam. Because the Sharingan is  **not** the Byakugan, Izuna makes the mistake of dodging the Hiraishin kunai instead of batting it away. The Senju brings his hands together, touches his chakra to the tag and activates it with practiced ease.

The  **face** the Uchiha makes when Tobirama appears behind him is absolutely  **priceless** \-  _ what a shame I can’t keep this forever _ . In his eagerness, however, Tobirama has moved too soon. Izuna manages to deflect the stab at his ribs, and the Senju is fed up enough with war that he pulls the ace from his sleeve. The Change unravels the knots holding his armor, as planned.

He looks the shell shocked Uchiha in the eyes when he opens his mouth, intent on  **washing this pest right off the face of the earth** . The chakra for his storm gathers obligingly at the back of his throat, and Tobirama’s whisker stretches out to grip Izuna’s flailing arm as his rival falls backwards in haste to get away.

 

“Tobira, NO!” He’s just unleashing all the power when Hashirama appears in front of him, gripping his horns and tilting his head down and away from Izuna.  **Protecting** the Uchiha, who takes the opportunity to scramble between Anija’s legs and out of the line of fire. Lightning and water draw a line in the earth between the elder Senju’s legs, tearing away the under armour and scorching the skin of his thighs.

Tobirama halts his attack, closing his mouth before he removes any chances of having little niblings to dote on. He looks up to meet his brothers Disappointed Frown with his own angry scowl, immeasurably glad for a moment that he had eyebrows as a dragon.  _ Why is Anija protecting the enemy, why is he allowing them to cause more damage _ ? Izuna is still gaping at him, and Tobirama is mildly comforted that he’s managed to catch the Uchiha in the side with his storm. It’s not fatal, but at least the scar will be a sizable reminder.

Touka lands behind Hashirama, cutting off any hopes of escape. Madara is the next to join them, chakra  **shocked** - **worried** - **angry** , and is kneeling at Izuna’s side in an instant. His lunge to get them apart  _ lest they escape and survive to kill more Senju _ is cut off by Hashirama yanking his head back to eye level. “Tobirama, as Clan Head I command you-” and the younger Senju aches inside that he’s given an order and not simply asked as a brother- “to  **let them go** . For peace.” Anija has only to ask. Tobirama is always a brother first, a protector of his precious things. 

 

As it is, Tobirama cannot disobey a direct order- dragon or not, he is a Senju. Red eyes drift toward the Uchiha, and he looks just in time to see Madara remove his gloves and reach out to remove Izuna’s tunic. Overwhelmed with brotherly concern as he is, the elder Uchiha doesn’t even seem to notice when his fingers brush the pearlescent scale dangling around the youngers neck- Tobirama however, will be hard pressed to forget. The moment changes him  **forever** .

It’s a little like walking up the stairs in the dark and finding there is one less step than he thought there to be. His belly lurches as he falls through empty space, only to connect an infinite moment later with a hard sort of certainty of-  **this is the one** . The knowledge hits like the right key sliding into an unimaginably complex lock, and Tobirama is forced to sit down to withstand that perfect shift of his axis aligning. He hardly notices that he drags Hashirama right off the ground, entirely oblivious to his  **loud** exclamation of shock to be hoisted a good foot off the ground to dangle from Tobirama’s horns like the ugliest sort of ornament. 

Tobirama has eyes only for his mate, who has rudely yet to notice him- motherhenning over Izuna as he is.  _ Should he wait, is his soulmate going to approach him or should he go first _ ? When Madara  **finally** turns to look at him after a good minute of Izuna pointing and stuttering, Tobirama realises that having Hashirama swinging from his head is likely a rather unattractive look and shakes the idiot off in Touka’s general direction. He sits up as tall as possible, arching his neck  **just so** and bringing his hands neatly next to each other and his ears forward.  **There** ,  _ much better _ . Madara looks appropriately awestruck- for all of two seconds.

 

“YOU!” His mate is  **angry** . That’s not good, has he done something wrong?  _ Perhaps he’ll be less angry if he weren’t so short _ . Yes- that must be it- and Tobirama obligingly reclines so that those blazing red and black eyes are almost level with his own. His mate stalks right up to him,  _ brave is good _ , and presses himself right into Tobirama’s space-  _ not going to roll over for you yet _ .“Some good luck you turned out to be. Next time I see you, I’m taking you  **head** .”

**That** kick starts Tobirama’s frontal lobe back into proper function. Something inside  **withers** ,  _ beheading is a rather clear rejection after all _ . He has a bare moment to feel the pain before a hot rush of shame sends all his scales standing on end in a full body flush.  _ Staring into the Sharingan like some love-struck doe _ . It was  **reckless** , he could’ve been  **killed** . Could’ve gotten his  **family** killed. 

Madara rushes to Izuna’s side when Tobirama moves to stand, chakra blazing blue and edging toward Susanoo, gunbai at the ready.  _ Ready for a killing blow _ . It shouldn’t sting as much as it does, the Uchiha is his  **enemy** . Tobirama carefully treads along the edges of Madara’s strike range, only halfway registering the hush over the battlefield.

Touka is standing next to his brother, who is flat on his backside and looks a little torn between confused joy and angry tears. She frowns at him, eyeing his bristeling scales. Hashirama yelps when Tobirama grips the back of his shirt and lifts him like a cat would a misbehaving kitten, crossing his legs to preserve his modesty. Touka leaps to settle in the dip where his neck meets his shoulders- she’d been overjoyed when he’d reached a size fit for riding, and for once he doesn’t roll her off. “Uhm, retreat?” Hashirama mutters sheepishly as they pass the stunned Senju. He twists just enough to wave at the Uchiha Clan Head as they near the edge of the battlefield. “Bye Madara! Please think about what I- ACK!” His farewell speech is cut off as Tobirama leaps up into the trees, and Touka snickers in glee as she grips the regrown mane infront of her.

 

Tobirama slides gracefully into the branches of his favourite tree, a truly enormous oak that Hashirama had grown to overhang the bank of the Naka just for him. The trunk is as thick around as the Main House, and the broughs almost as wide as the engawa. Tobirama walks out along the one that stretches out over the water, sets Anija in the fork of a branch and stretches out to lie like a leopard as he rests his snout on the mans’ thighs.

“So what was that about Littlest?” Touka walks right up his neck to stand upside down next to Hashirama, all the better to peer into his eyes. Tobirama scrunches his muzzle and huffs, breath blowing Anijas hair up to tickle her face. Hashirama hums and scratches at the base of his ears. Touka is one to press until he gives in just to be rid of her- Hashirama, however, will follow him about with the most Understanding of Pouts on his face until Tobirama is ready to talk.  _ Manipulative, fat lipped, big eyed  _ **_puppy_ ** _ \- most inconvenient _ .

“You were staring at him like a hormonal teen-  **oh my god it’s him** !” He shifts in discomfort at Touka’s shouting, but he’s glad he didn’t have to say anything. When Tobirama looks up at his brother, suspicious at the silence, he finds Hashirama wearing an unusually serious face. “Madara is your soulmate, isn’t he.” It isn’t a question, sombre words that feel more accusing than they should. Tobirama nods, and Hashirama chews his lips.

Touka settles next to their Clan head, propping her muddied feet up on his shoulder and ignoring the affronted sputtering. She turns grey eyes to him, frown creasing her brow and turning her features old beyond her years. She grasps a whisker, petting the white fluff on the end with something very much like worry in her eyes.

Because being serious for too long would likely break something fundamental in the universe, Hashirama is the first to speak. That idiotic grin is a fair warning, and Tobirama wonders if he should push the idiot out of the tree before he speaks- “This is perfect! Now we can try for peace properly! All we have to do is get Madara to accept you before you turn into a… bloodthirsty… mindless… beast…” Touka smacks him, but the stupid grin remains, only a little forced.


	8. Ceasefire

To everyone's great surprise- and Madara’s stark displeasure- Izuna seems to have taken somewhat of a liking to Tobirama. Hashirama thinks it sweet, Touka laughs her head off and the youngest Senju does his level best to avoid the other teen. Madara still looks at him with a deep seated kind of hatred, and having Izuna trailing after him when they meet to discuss the cease fire only makes it worse.

Not that the little weasel  **cares** , grinning the way he is from opposite the table. Tobirama does his best to look away,  _ perhaps if it’s ignored it will  _ **_fuck off_ ** , but the little weasel wriggles and tilts his head and instinct forces him to look at the movement. Madara, who has been watching their exchange from his seat with hands that are angry claws in his lap, snarls at Tobirama and tries to pull his little brother into stillness by his hair.

It doesn’t work. Hashirama stutters in the middle of a request from the elders when the Uchiha Heir abruptly rises from his seat and moves around the low table. Touka and Tobirama tense on either side of their Clan Head, Hikaku makes a mad grab for the brat as he passes, and Madara looks rather caught up between screaming in rage and dragging his remaining sibling back to perceived safety. The little Weasel blithely ignores both his fellow Uchiha, and  **very** slowly comes to sit beside Tobirama.

Shuffling away until he’s practically sitting in Hashirama’s lap is no help at all, when all Izuna does is take it as an invitation to follow. Anija is laughing at him, Tobirama can feel it in the way his body is shaking. The Nara- who have agreed to host peace talks for the foreseeable future- are also grinning with mirth. They don’t even  **bother** to try hiding it. The only one who isn’t laughing is Touka, who is watching with steely eyes that mean she’s going to make Izuna a good head shorter if he does anything stupid- peace dreams be damned.

 

The Uchiha, for his part, does nothing more than wriggle up next to his rival. Slowly, and with hands where they can be seen because he’s perfectly capable of reading the tension in Tobirama’s body. When Izuna turns to look at the Senju, eyes black and wide and innocent, Tobirama doesn’t meet his gaze. He focuses with great intent on the bridge of Izuna’s nose.

Madara growls, and it takes a great deal of effort not to flinch. He doesn’t quite manage, judging by the way Hashirama subtly rubs their shoulders together. His mate is red in the face with anger and is wearing a fearsome  _ attractive, so pretty _ scowl on his face. He looks about ready to spit fire at his younger brother and Tobirama both,  _ I’d let him if it made him happy _ .  **No** . He’s to protect Anija, he can live without something as stupidly fairytale-like as a  **soulmate** .

“Izuna. Just  **what** is it that you think you’re doing.” Madara speaks slowly. Spits, really, his teeth are clenched so tight they creak.  _ A nice jaw too, perfect to cover in kisses and bites and mark as  _ **_mine_ ** . It’s distracting, and does nothing good for the erection that Tobirama has had for well over an hour. Breathing in the mans scent was all it took. It’s terribly embarrassing, and only a lifetime of living through awkward situations with Touka and Hashirama has enabled him to withhold his blush. Hearing Madara  **speak** only makes it worse, and the wet discomfort means his throbbing length is leaking profusely.  _ Thank Kami for the many layers of formal wear _ .

Izuna doesn’t reply. All he does, in fact is prop an elbow up on the table and stare meaningfully at his sibling from under raised eyebrows and blink. The whole room is quiet now, all laughter gone. The little weasel must do  **something** , because Madara’s gaze is on the Senju in an instant. Tobirama turns his head away, entirely unwilling to face the hatred in his mates’ eyes, and pointedly elbows his brother. Hashirama is a people person so he can  _ just fucking do  _ **_something_ ** _ , gods dammit _ .

 

Needless to say, it’s the most uncomfortable two hours of Tobirama’s  **life** . By the time they adjourn, he practically bolts for the door. Or tries to, because his cock is actually rather sore after being hard for three hours and it’s made quite the mess on the inside of his hakama. Madara smirks when he leaves, he can see it out of the corner of his eye. Izuna makes to follow, and is met with Touka’s best ‘ **I think the fuck not** ’ face. His cousin covers his retreat, and even Hashirama spends only a bare moment speaking to his best friend.

The Nara meet him with lazy glances as he stalks his way to the garden, fully intent on using his mastery of Suiton to drown himself in the rather sizable and surprisingly well maintained koi pond.  _ Perhaps being henged as a fish for long enough will erase the memories, koi have such terrible recall as is _ . Unfortunately because he’s a genius, Tobirama is very much aware that that is  **not** how henges work.

He seats himself gingerly on the soft mossy rocks near the edge of the pond. Touka joins him after a moment, followed shortly by Hashirama. He sighs softly when they rest their heads on his shoulders, agitated instincts somewhat soothed by  _ water, my treasures with me and safe _ . It’s rather telling that neither of them speak, but he can’t find it in himself to do so either, especially when he can sense the three Uchiha on the very edge of hearing range.

Hashirama, a loud and outspoken drunken puppy of a person, is unusually subtle about the diagnostic healing jutsu that he conducts through their touching shoulders. Tobirama’s face feels like it’s going to melt right off when his brother’s chakra tingles around the base of his erection, but he can’t help but sigh softly in relief when the blood flow is redirected and he  **finally** goes lax. Touka smiles a little knowingly at him, an entirely capable sensor on her own, but doesn’t mock him.  _ For once _ .

 

The next two days follow much in the same fashion. Tobirama does his level best to turn his mind to the ceasefire, and Madara does even better at glaring a hole in his forehead whenever he deigns to speak. Hashirama tries to smooth out the tension by being more of an idiotic dolt that usual, and Izuna glues himself to Tobirama’s side like a particularly obstinate limpet. Touka and the Nara seem content to watch things from a distance and try not to laugh when anyone important speaks.

Ignoring the withering feeling of rejection is a little easier when Madara seems determined to make Tobirama angry. His mate is  _ beautiful, strong and  _ **_unbelievably thick skulled_ ** . He rubs the Senju up all the wrong ways, entirely determined to ignore the logic of any arguments Tobirama presents. They’re shouting at the top of their lungs, right past a fluttering Hashirama- “Guys, don’t fight. Guys? Hello? Touka help me!”.

“How can you even  **think** of putting children in danger like that! Using them as gophers is like painting a target on their backs!” Tobirama is bent halfway over the table, fingernails scraping long furrows into the wood in his anger. Madara’s face is only an arms length away from his own, and from this close he can really appreciate the finest dusting of  **freckles** on what he can see of the man’s cheeks and the way his eyes sparkle with unrestrained  **hatred** .

“Stupid Senju! How idiotic are you! The shinobi of both our clans are very much aware that killing children is punishable by death!”  _ It’s amazing how wide he can open that mouth of his, though though there are much more pleasant ways to make him scream _ . Tobirama’s brain slams the filter down just in time to prevent him from making a fool of himself and saying as much. What comes out instead is thankfully a valid contribution to the argument, “It’s not our shinobi I’m worried about you retarded hedgehog! Or has it yet to occur to that miniscule brain of yours that using children as messengers would present the perfect opportunity to any who would wish to restart the war!” They’re close enough now that Tobirama’s breath is ruffling feathery black locks, and he can see the man’s cheeks slowly turning red.  _ Kami he’d blush so well for me, on his belly with my cock in his _ -

 

Izuna dives across the table just in time to catch Madara. The elder screams rather spectacularly when he’s tackled out of the room and into the hall. “LET ME GO! I’M GOING TO KILL THAT- WERGH!” Hashirama leans forward as best he can to peek after his childhood best friend as he’s dragged down the hallway and Hikaku startles a bit at the mans proximity when he glances up from under his arms. Touka leans around his brother to lay a hand on his back.

Tobirama is suddenly all too aware how much of Madara’s scent he’s inhaling, panting as he is. It’s musky and rich, laced with hints of spicy warmth and a fire in winter. It makes his cock drool and his mouth water, and Tobirama only barely stops himself from storming out. He’ll not be seen as some sulky, tempestuous child in front of their hosts and the last Uchiha in the room.

Not that the Nara would care, laughing quietly amongst themselves as they watch the source of heated curses get dragged bodily down the hallway. Hikaku, for his part, looks as though he’s attempting to use sheer force of will to conjure up a Doton and sink through the floor. Gentle rubbing on his back draws his attention back to Touka, who sends him a sharp grin full of teeth. “Well done Littlest. He can’t argue with us if he’s unable to speak.” Tobirama is well within his rights to preen at the praise, even if only his family know him well enough to tell.


	9. Proposals and Discoveries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mental instability ahead.

Tobirama is halfway through drafting a marriage proposal to Uzumaki Mito when he has his first episode. There’s the strangest sliding sensation in the back of his mind, and he’s just lifting a hand to see if Touka has thrown agar jelly at him when he wasn’t looking- it’s  **not** as funny as she thinks it is, he  **hates** the slimy sensation- when something in him rolls over. There’s the sensation of falling through empty air and that  **thing** wakes.

When he surfaces, it’s to find his head resting on Hashirama’s chest Touka tucked up against his side. His scaly chest- and jerking his head up only lands him with his horns catching in the rafters. Anija is making slow, soothing sounds as he approaches. “Hello hello.”  _ As though he’s talking to some fevered animal _ . Touka is standing just to his right, watchful and assessing.

Tobirama bends his neck to brace his hands on the beam holding his horns and  **pushes** . The wood gives way with a creak and he sits back neatly on his haunches, hands patting at his horns to make sure nothing broke. Anija comes to stand by him, and it’s only then that he registers the tears in their clothes- both Hashirama’s and Touka’s.

“You’re back.” It’s so unusual for his cousin to outright hug him, and her relief pulls him up short in his careful sniff down of them both for wounds.  _ Back _ ? He’s been here since- he was sitting at the kotatsu. A now very broken kotatsu- the table of it broken in half and the blanket curled into a crude nest. He doesn’t remember Changing.

 

“Hey, hey Littlest- it’s okay. Rela- you’re going to break something.” He can’t change back. He’s  **trying** , and that now familiar feeling of relaxing back into his human skin keeps sliding away- like a dream half dreamt when one wakes in the middle of the night.  _ Stuck, stuck stuck stuckstuck _ **_stuck_ ** .

Hashirama has to restrain him with Mokuton. It’s certainly not the proudest moment in his life, and he imagines that a dragon almost the size of a horse thrashing about in the throes of a panic attack must look rather amusing. Tobirama thinks he can be forgiven for laughing madly at the thought, though it sounds more like a coughing growl when he does.

When he stills, vision clearing of black edges, he’s held to the floor. The vines binding him are soft and covered in moss, though some have almost been scraped through by the rough keeling on the scales of his back. Hashirama and Touka both sit cross legged by his head, petting him slow and gentle in all the places he loves most. He’s been crying, too- the moisture on his cheeks and the snot on his nose make it all the more obvious. He’s still a dragon though.

“We found you like this. Actually, you came to drag me out of bed and caught Hashirama when he came to drop dinner.” Touka is frowning, and her words are slow and heavy with reluctance. Deep grey eyes meet red, and she brushes his tears away with the heel of her palm. Hashirama answers the unspoken question in Tobirama’s eyes. “You didn’t recognise us. Not really. It’s a little like someone swapped your brain with that clingy cat that lives one house down. You carried me and Touka into the living room. You wouldn’t let us leave that little blanket nest that you made.” Hashirama is crying now too. Not his usual dramatic waterfall, but slow tears.  _ Didn’t recognise them, held them  _ **_hostage_ ** .

 

It takes almost four hours for him to change back, and when he does it feels almost slippery. Like his skin might just slide off and leave him as a dragon again. The good news in all this is, Mito has accepted the proposal that Touka had finished in his stead. Hashirama had been spectacularly surprised when he was told that he was to be engaged, but for once he didn’t fight Tobirama on this.

That’s how the younger Senju had come to be here, standing at his elder brothers side and trying to keep the man still on his feet. The Uzumaki convoy are close, almost within sight, and he hopes he can postpone Mito-hime’s discovery of his brothers  **eager puppy** personality until they’re  **away** from prying eyes. What he doesn’t expect is for Hashirama to freeze at his first glimpse of the Uzumaki princess.

It would be amusing, really, if it weren’t so embarrassing. Touka is laughing, he can hear her Evil Cackling from here. He can also feel Hashirama’s knees wobbling, so he goes to save the face of the Senju at large before his Idiot Brother falls flat on his because his legs are shaking like those of a newborn colt. She watches him approach, graciously ignoring how he drags Anija along and then into a deep formal bow. “Uzumaki-hime.” Comes out a little strangled when he subtly kicks the idiot, but it will have to do.

“Hashirama-dono.” They get their first look at her eyes when she rises from her own bow- a green grey, the colour of the sea on a stormy day. They seem to rob Hashirama of his voice, leaving his mouth to lie open like that of a gaping fish. Tobirama tenses when they turn to him. She narrows them faintly, gaze brushing slowly across his face in measurement. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her, because she bows deeper to him and calls him prince though he is only the heir.

 

Uzumaki Mito knows what he is from the moment she sets eyes on him. She treats him with a firm sort of respect that leaves the Senju as a whole  **gaping** at her, speaks softly to him with the same formality she turns to his brother, who is Clan Head. The rest of the Uzumaki seem to follow her lead, and it makes Tobirama uncomfortable. Especially since he only finds out that she is aware on the fourth day of her visit.

“Please feel free to bear your own skin if this one affords you discomfort, Tobirama-dono.” He pauses in his irritable shifting, and suddenly the garden- empty of all but the two brothers and their guest- seems all too silent. She keeps her gaze steady, eye contact unwavering even when the Senju brothers both shift into subtle defensive positions.

“I’m not sure I’m clear as to your meaning, Mito-hime.”   
“Such submissive behavior is unbecoming of one such as yourself. There is no need to hide your teeth from me, I mean you no harm. Though you are only the second I have met, I recognised you immediately for who you are. Wearing human skin does not disguise your movements, graceful even for a shinobi. Please, feel free to be comfortable in my presence. I am to be your sister, after all.”

Hashirama looks just as gobsmacked as Tobirama imagines himself to be. She says it all with a straight face, posture perfect and relaxed.  **_Yes_ ** _ , this is the one for Anija _ . Hashirama may not be entirely aware of it yet, shellshocked as he is, but Mito and Tobirama both know and that is what is important.  _ She will be perfect do drag him to sensibility by his hair, as a proper mate should _ .

 

He comes to regret that last thought,  **thoroughly** . So they like each other, he’s glad. What he  **isn’t** happy about, is having his sensitive ears subjected to the sounds of exceedingly passionate sex coming from down the hall- relegated to his old room as he is. What’s worse is the smell of it in the mornings, and keeping a straight face is rather difficult.

Across from him sits his brother, hair disheveled- he  **knows** Hashirama enjoys having it pulled, his brother had screamed as much- and looking deeply satisfied after a night of spectacularly loud debauchery.

Mito, for her part, looks entirely content to subject him to a slow breakfast.  _ Honestly, this is the second coming of Touka _ . Tobirama will admit to being a little grumpy, and he’s  **allowed to be** . They had kept him up until well after midnight, and he feels as though he’s tired on their behalf as well as his own. Disregarding entirely that he’d had nightmares spurred into life by the smell of feminine arousal, and had spent his three hours of sleep dreaming of half blind eyes and crushed eggs. 

As luck would have it, that is exactly where he has his second episode in as many months. It’s longer than the first, and he comes to almost a week later to find himself curled several times around their fuuton, head tucked neatly up against their pillows. Touka has somehow made her bed in the warm dip of his belly, and when he opens his eyes they are all looking at him.

“Who is it?” Mito is the first to speak, and it seems to take Anija and his cousin a moment to register just what she means. “Uchiha Madara, my childhood best friend and head of his Clan. Tobira almost killed his last brother, Izuna. We’re working toward a treaty but…” Hashirama can’t seem to finish, his gaze drawn to where Tobirama’s whisker has curled around the wrist of his petting hand. “I see.” And though her voice is even and steady, Tobirama turns his head away from the pity in her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mito is queen and she knows it.   
> The next chapter will be from Madara's point of view. I hope he cooperates.


	10. A Difficult Situation

“No.” It’s firm and clipped, almost growled, but Madara can’t help himself. Izuna is an adrenaline addled  **brat** .  _ Where is that fucking pond when he needs to dunk the little idiot?! _ His brother follows on his heels, skidding around the corners Madara turns with angry huffing. He’s  **not** in the mood for this- this- this  **utter foolish fuckery** that his brother seems to deem a ‘perfect solution’. “You are  **not** going to court that white  **beast!** How in the name of Kami did you even come up with such a ridiculous concussion of an idea?! WHERE IS THAT POND, HOW COULD IT JUST  UP AND WALK OFF ON ME LIKE THAT?!”

Izuna seems content to ignore all ideas of health and safety and a long life with all his appendages where they should be. “But Nii-san, he’s  **sacred** . You know as well as I do what it would mean for  **your** peace ideals if  **I** turned out to be his  **soulmate** .” That pulls the elder up short, itching hands fisted in creaking leather gloves- tucked under his biceps, lest he make himself an only child in a fit of temper.  _ I love Izuna, I love Izuna, I love him, I almost lost him _ .

“Aniki, think this through-”

“Think this- he almost  **killed** you Izuna! You could have  **died** had Hashirama not intervened! And now you expect me to just let you  **court him** as though he didn’t almost blow a hole through your chest?!”

“I know! It was  **amazing** , he- ergh!” Izuna has to make a mad dash when Madara’s tenuous temper gives way under the force of the besotted expression sparked at the memory- recorded in perfect glittering detail by the Sharingan, Kami but Tobirama is  **glorious** as a dragon- and just manages to escape clawed grasping hands. Madara screams as he gives chase, loud and more than a little manic. However, while the elder is the stronger of the brothers, he is also- thanks to a recent growth spurt on Izuna’s part- the shorter of the two.

 

The household staff scatter before them with practiced ease as Izuna takes advantage of his longer legs, and barely spare Madara a glace when he thunders past a few moments later. “ **Get your scrawny ass back here you little SHIT!** ” Madara is feared by hundreds, equaled only by Hashirama and- most importantly- bears a pair of high capacity lungs and a voice box that has worked overtime since before he learned to shout coherently. He is  **not** going to be outrun by his  **deranged** sibling- so he cheats and throws a passing stool at Izuna’s skinny behind.

It connects with those idiotically long legs and the little prat hits the wooden floor with a satisfying clatter. That he rolls to his feat so easily doesn’t even dampen the victory, as it gives Madara all the time he needs to dive onto the brat and pull him into a firm headlock. The elder is  **not** snarling, he is expressing his rage sub-vocally- it’s a thing, he’d looked it up just to make  **sure** Hikaku wasn’t fucking with him. Too clever for his own good, that one- and so good at disguising his teenage snark as impeccable manners.

“Out of shape much, Aniki? You’re a lot rounder along the edges than you used to be.” I _ zuna  _ **_really_ ** _ doesn’t know when to stop _ . As though he’s the thought aloud- entirely possible, Madara’s brain to mouth filter is riddled with enormous holes  **at best** \- he pushes on with “You know, Tobirama’s stamina is spectacular, I bet he’d me the most fantastic bed p-” A worn leather glove cuts him off, but Madara has already heard far too much for his sanity. He therefore takes great,  **well deserved** pleasure in dragging his gagged sibling out into the garden and tossing him into the koi pond.  _ I’m sure they’ve missed him, he doesn’t visit nearly as much as he used to _ . Madara cackles to himself at that, and doesn’t even  **try** to disguise it as sane laughter.

 

Unfortunately Izuna is not alone in his opinion. Even more unfortunate is that it is shared by the Council of Elders, albeit reluctantly. “Perhaps it would be best to… acquire the dragon by other means. I am fairly certain we could provide a cell large enough to house him, temporarily of course.” If Madara was asked which of the wrinkled warmongering windbags he hates most, it would be Setsuo.

That the idea is presented so blithely and with so bland a tone does absolutely nothing to calm his temper, and Madara can’t help what slides out of his mouth. “Oh yes, what a fantastic idea. Infiltrate the Senju Compound, capture their  **best** Sensor, escape without raising the alarm while avoiding the claws and tail and teeth of an angry dragon as  **big as a damn horse** and nearly  **thirty meters long** ! Bring him back to the compound and put him in a  **wooden box! Then** all we have to do is **pray** he deigns to **fall in love with his captors** instead of  **eat them** , which he  **has** done before! When is it that you will be departing to go on this  **wondrous adventure** , Elder Setsuo?!”

The man looks appropriately pale, cowed into silence. The whole room is quiet, actually, and Madara takes the opportunity to dismiss himself. If the screen crunches a little when he slams it on the way out, he will swear he didn’t hear. Izuna and Hikaku catch up a moment later, both wearing smug smirks, though their teenage cousin somehow manages to disguise it as a polite smile. When his younger brother hands him a small scroll, he thinks nothing of it until Izuna speaks. “Oh yeah, Hashirama is getting married.”

“ **HE’S WHAT?!** ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little short, but I hope the double post makes up for that. Madara is going to give himself an ulcer at this rate.
> 
> Oh, and I forgot. My Instagram is 'the_dark_side_of_art', and I have posted some art in regards to this story.


	11. Troublesome Tyke

It’s been a month since the last meeting, and as per the agreement Madara is now on his way to the Nara compound with Izuna and Hikaku. “Fat Izuna!” And Kagami. His brother shoots their cousin a withering glare, which is resolutely ignored. “Why did you teach him that? Now every rodent he sees he calls by my name. It’s- ergh. No.” Needless to say, Izuna is most unimpressed by their little tag along. Madara is of the opinion that this is his comeuppance for being such a terribly annoying child, and has said as much. Many, many times- he enjoys being right.

Nara Shikakami is waiting at the gates. The Clan Head is around Madara’s height, slouched almost in half as he is, and willow slender. His face bears typical Nara features, tawny skin and dark hair. In fact the most distinct thing about him is his eyes, one flat black and the other so pale all one can see is the pupil. Very much Madara’s type, and he would be quite the tempting prize had the Uchiha  **sworn** never to sleep one of the clan ever again. _ Really, being powerful does not equate to doing all the work _ . Shikakami lolls his head to look at them, and Madara gives him as much of a bow as is necessary. It’s returned lazily, almost as though the man is falling very slowly before he straightens somewhat again. “Mh.” Is accompanied by a wave of his hand, and the man strolls off. Madara rolls his eyes behind the safety of his fringe to alleviate the need to snarl. He  **does** have manners, despite what Izuna will tell anyone with an ear to spare.

 

He’s confused when, instead of heading toward the Main House, Shikakami leads them to the Clan Forrest. The man leads them into the trees without pause, and they walk for a good twenty minutes before the Senju envoy comes into view. Hashirama turns to grin at him, rushing forward to sweep him off his feet in a crushing hug that does wonders for the crick in Madara’s back-  _ not that he’s going say as much to the overgrown idiot _ .

“Put me down you woodheaded dolt! I’m  **not** some  **bag of rice** that you can just  **swing around** !” “Hashirama-dono, perhaps it would be best if you were to set your… friend, on his feet. It is improper to swing such a prickly person about.”  _ And you are _ ? Feminine and soft, like velvet over steel and Hashirama moves to obey immediately.  **That** compounds Madara’s interest, and he leans around the oaf to look at the source. She’s small and petite, red haired with skin the colour of thick cream. Her bearing is confident, and she moves with effortless grace to approach him, slate green eyes unwavering from his own.  _ I don’t like this one _ .

“Mito-hime, this is Uchiha Madara, Head of his clan and my best fr-ow! Madara, that was mean!” A pouting sniff. “Anyway, this is Uzumaki Mito, my betrothed.” He ignores how Hashirama rubs his sore foot on the back of his calf, and approaches the Uzumaki with narrowed eyes. “Uchiha-sama.” Her bow is almost too shallow, meeting only the bare minimum requirement of respect that he is owed. He raises a brow and returns it with one of his own, but doesn’t speak. He knows a fox in his den when he sees one, and he’s not falling for her tricks.

“Where is that… Cattish brother of yours, Senju?” He’s not sensed the White Demon, and he’s fairly certain that the younger of the Senju brothers is far too petty to pass up such a good opportunity to exercise that wonderful tongue of his. **_Not_** _that he’s needed of course, thing would likely run all the smoother in his absence, wicked thing that he is_. “He is… Occupied at present.” It’s the brutish cousin that answers him instead, sans any kind of greeting. _Boorish Oni Woman_.

 

Hashirama erects them a table and chairs with a carefully casual wave of his hand-  _ show off _ \- and they each take their seats. All except Kagami, who wriggles out of Hikaku’s grip, approaches Touka as though he’s know her for all the long four years of his life, and promptly squirms under her arms and onto her lap. Both Izuna and the boys’ uncle  **gape** when all he receives is a startled frown.

Kagami- for his part- seems entirely content to ignore them and inspect the curls of Mokuton in the wood of the table in front of him from all angles. Hashirama gives them all a blithering, beaming smile that squints his eyes.  _ Happy go lucky  _ **_twit_ ** . Mito sweeps her Holier Than Thou gaze over the lot of them, and Madara can’t help but bristle a little when she leads the proceedings. “Shall we begin?”

 

They’re an hour into things when Kagami’s dwarven attention span is drawn by one of the Nara foals when it comes to nibble at the soft green shoots of grass that Hashirama has sprouted in his excitement. “Forrest puppy!” None of the Uchiha snag the brat in time to stop him from leaping off Touka’s lap and running clumsily off after the startled animal. Touka looks after him with a small, and perhaps a little sly, smile.

“Don’t worry about him, the Nara keep their Forrest free of predators.” He  **sneers** at her, but Shikakami nods slowly from his place lying among the twisted roots of an old pine. “The deer will keep an eye on him, Uchiha-san. There is no need to be concerned.” Hikaku shifts uneasily, but settles at his Clan Head’s almost imperceptible nod. Madara is perfectly capable of sensing any threats the boy may encounter for a mile around.

Besides, he has yet to corner the Uzumaki and Hashirama seems content to let The Witch lead the negotiations. He’s  **not** leaving until he figures out just what she’s hiding under all that silk.  **No** Uzumaki is  **that** even tempered, and he’s perfectly willing and able to sit here until he finds out just where to push her and what exactly her plans are for all of them.  _ This may take a while _ .

 

It’s another hour before the curly haired imp returns, barreling right into Hikaku, who is doing his absolute best to keep Madara in his seat and away from Uzumaki Mito’s throat. “Uncle! Uncle! Uncle uncle uncleuncleuncle! Uncle  **Hi-ka-ku** !” He jerks insistently at the teens sleeve, and Madara uses the distraction to loosen the grip on his own robe. 

“Kagami, just-” The four year old talks right over him, eyes shining with excitement and dancing on the spot in dizzying circles. Madara wonders just  **where** in the  **hells** children get all their energy. “Uncle come look! I found a  **really big** Izuna! Come comecomecome Uncle Hikaku-huhuhu!” Kagami is hopping up and down now, and almost drags Madara’s cousin right out of his chair.  _ Hashirama won’t be laughing when he has a child with that much energy _ . Madara is  **reasonably sure** that Kagami actually extracts sugar right out of his surroundings,  _ it’s the only way to explain how much energy that boy has _ . 

Hikaku makes a face that is the perfect medium between  **mortified** and  **deeply frustrated** .  _ Good, the price to pay for being so ‘polite’ _ . Madara is entirely satisfied with what the Kami have seen to bless- curse- his sneaky cousin with, and waves the teen off with a smile and no small amount of glee. The look he gets tells him Hikaku is  **very much aware** of what he’s thinking, but Madara just wriggles his fingers as his cousin follows Kagami into the woods.

 

He’s allowed to keep his smug mood for all of five minutes, before unadulterated  **panic** from Hikaku blots out Kagami’s joy in his senses. Their gathering is up and sprinting a split second later, and Hashirama-  _ curse that fool with a thousand years of paperwork _ \- quickly overtakes Madara on longer legs. Mito moves after him at a speed is a  **lie** in her long kimono, and Touka brings up the rear behind Madara and Izuna. They reach the clearing a bare minute later to find a fluttering Hikaku at the edges.

In the very center of it, lounging in a patch of afternoon sunlight and being thoroughly trampled on by en entirely too excited Kagami, is Tobirama. White scales throw glittering refractions of all hues into the shadows of the trees, and Madara has half a second to think of just how  **beautiful** that skin is before Kagami treads on a whisker and Tobirama’s head rears back.

Red eyes snap open with a snort and fluff tipped ears flick back to match lips that pull back in a snarl. Hashirama and Madara both move forward, only to be stopped by surprisingly strong hands on their shoulders. “Wait but a moment.” Mito doesn’t look concerned in the least, and Madara only  **barely** manages to stop himself from breaking her wrist. He half turns to growl at her, and is cut off by gleeful giggles.

Kagami is sitting on Tobirama’s snout, grinning and laughing and very much in danger of getting a thorough hiding from Madara  **himself** when they get home. The last haze of sleep clears as Tobirama’s eyes cross to look at the tiny Uchiha sitting on his face, and lips relax over dagger sharp teeth. “Hello Big Izuna!” The original owner sputters in something like outrage, even as Tobirama’s ears twitch forward in interest. “Kagami that is  **not** a  **WEASEL** !” Madara only half registers the truly feminine pitch his voice reaches,  _ entirely allowable when the little brat is going to get himself eaten _ .

 

Izuna is the first to move, crossing the clearing and making to reach for his cousins nephew. He pulls up short when Tobirama rears his head, sending Kagami sliding off his snout. The boy vents a happy squeal that’s drowned out by four separate shouts when jaws snap at him. “ **KAGAMI!** ” Madara’s heart leaps straight out of his throat when teeth grip tiny indigo robes by the red and white uchiwa on the back, and Kagami giggles as he’s dangled two meters in the air by the back of his clothes.

“ **Put him down! NOW!** ” Madara is screaming, and he couldn’t give a fuck. Izuna moves to grab at the hanging feet, but Tobirama sits back on his hind legs and sweeps his brothers feet out from under him with a flick of his tail. Madara approaches with the inevitability of a thunderstorm, snorting like an angry bull. “ **I said: Put. Him. Down. THIS INSTANT!** ”

Tobirama jerks at the volume, and red eyes move to look at Madara. There’s something… off about them, and for a moment all the dragon does is stare at him. Slowly Tobirama moves, shifting carefully to all four feet and approaching Madara in a ripple of sinuous muscle. Kagami is deposited gently in his arms, and Tobirama moves past them. Scales rustle against fabric as the younger Senju rubs the length of his body against Madara’s side, and the Uchiha yelps when a furry tail caresses between his legs. He whirls to round on Hashirama. “ **What** in the  **hells** is  **wrong** with that brother of yours?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *puts Kagami down and nudges him toward my fic* "Go fuck shit up. Shoo on."


	12. Cleanliness next to Godliness

Madara is… stressed. Actually, that’s not true. What he really is,  _ is five seconds away from commiting  _ **_mass homicide_ ** . So, because he’s a rational, level headed adult, he storms out of the clan meeting and slams the door. With a reasonable amount of force; enough to knock it right off its rails.  _ If he  _ **_ever_ ** _ has to hear another word about that stupid pretty dragon boy, it will be an  _ **_eternity_ ** _ too soon _ .

In the spirit of being Rational and Adult, he does something he’s been lax in indulging in as of late. Something to get the tension out of his back and hopefully stave off the headache he feels waving in his future when he goes for a ‘friendly’ meeting with Hashirama, that it feels good is honestly just a bonus. Sex.

Madara is only a man, powerful enough to be able to handle himself should some idiot attempt assassination by seduction, but a man nonetheless. Therefore it’s only reasonable for him to go off to the red district of the nearest large town and see a professional. He’s not all too picky about gender, so when a reasonably attractive young woman approaches him, he’s all too glad be led to her room.

 

An hour later finds a grey heron on the windowsill of the connected washroom in which Madara is dressing after a deeply pleasant hot bath. The bird belongs to Hashirama, not a proper Summon but also no ordinary grey waterbird. It levels a disturbingly intelligent amber eye at him before nudging open the window and  **stalking** toward him on long, thin legs.

The messenger bird is patient enough to allow him to finish pulling on his pants.

Madara extends an open palm when he’s done, and it deposits the scroll with a  **slow** tip of its head. The bird may belong to Hashirama, but Madara is fairly certain it got its attitude from that infuriating younger brother of his. The message, when he rolls it open, is a reminder that he is actually half an hour late.  _ Pushy, good for nothing Senju _ .

Madara may perhaps actually have forgotten about their meeting, caught up as he was.  _ Entirely allowable, she’s got a wonderful pair of legs on her, and so very  _ **_flexible_ ** . He’s forgotten her name too, as it happens.  _ Not important _ . She’s also still asleep, spread out and thoroughly exhausted under the covers, and he can’t help but smirk a little when he walks past.

He hadn’t been rough, never would be with a civilian, but Madara has- in his opinion, and Izuna can  **shut up** about it being nothing compared to that Pale Demon- got fantastic stamina. He leaves her payment and a  **large** tip under a pot of hot tea, because his mother had beaten gentlemanly manners into him with an iron poker and he’s  **not** forgotten. The Uzumaki Witch and that Oni Senju are just exceptions to the rule.

 

The heron follows him until long after he reaches their little meeting place at the pebbly banks of the Naka. The Excitable Idiot is waiting for him in the shadow of a truly enormous oak, standing in the water under one of the boughs and skipping rocks upstream. He’s scooped up in a hug as soon as Hashirama sees him. “Put me  **down** you giant bamboo shoot! Has that  **witch** of a wife failed to beat some manners into you?!” Hashirama pouts and huffs at him, but set him down after one last constriction of those unnecessarily muscular arms.

“You smell nice. Where have you been?” The question is light and curious, but there’s something  **unpleasant** in the elder Senju’s eyes. “How is Akemi? Still as flexible as she used to be?” Madara only says ‘yes’ because he’s distracted and suddenly far too aware of just how  **powerful** Hashirama is under all that puppylike stupidity, and that facing him in the middle of the forest is almost suicide. Not to mention that being reminded that while their battles had been a good work out for him against someone he could fight at full strength, they’d been no more than a friendly challenge on the Mokuton users behalf- it  **twinges** his ego a little.

“ **Madara** .” The tone is deep and low, far from a shout, and there’s a thunderous frown between Hashirama’s eyebrows. A warning look, if ever he’s seen one. Of course the natural thing to do for the Uchiha is to get angry-  _ the Idiot has  _ **_no reason_ ** _ to take that tone _ \- so Madara bristles with affront. “ **What** , Hashirama?!” It is perhaps a little louder than he means it to be.

 

The Senju turns to face him fully, not quite in a battle stance. His spine goes straighter than a Hyuuga’s and the tendons on his neck cast deep shadows- he looks  **imposing** in a way Madara is entirely unfamiliar with and never wants to see again. Plants rustle around them, turning toward Madara in a way that is rather like how those carnivorous vines in Waterfall Country had followed after Izuna.

Hashirama’s lip curls in a snarl and his arms twitch- and there’s a snap and a creak in the tree above. Madara jerks his head up, expecting to have to sign for a Katon, only to find a shimmer of white scales. Tobirama lifts his head- and  **yawns** . Mouth opening like that of a python, lips drawing back over teeth as long as Madara’s fingers, pink tongue curling out and whiskers shivering.

His eyes blink open slowly and the great maw closes. From his position on the ground Madara can see how that long body shudders and curls as Tobirama stretches, extending almost all the way along the bough and ending in a tail dragging in the water of the river. He looks back just in time to see the younger Senju turn to face them. Red eyes blink owlishly as tufted ears swivel slowly forward- it’s entirely  **adorable** in a way that’s just  **wrong** from a dragon. The beast that almost killed his brother and ate a number of their clansman looks like an innocent  **kitten** , the tip of his tongue sticking out as it is.

 

“ **Hashirama** …” He’s been set up.  _ So easy to forget that this idiot is a genius in his own right, though entirely understandable if this is what he’s using it for _ . Madara makes to stalk away, but one of those big hands-  _ honestly they’re like  _ **_dinner plates_ ** \- lands on his shoulder and squeezes. Hashirama is still smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, which are suddenly cold and foreign. “Come say hello, hmm Tobira?”

It’s not a direct order, but the younger Senju complies anyway- albeit at his own pace.  _ Stubborn, hardheaded pricks, the both of them _ . Although, Tobirama is a far prettier prick in comparison to Hashirama’s classic handsomeness.  _ Something about that sounds  _ **_wrong_ ** . Not that Madara is given much time to contemplate it. The youngest of the three men flows out of the tree like a waterfall of scales and supple muscle.

Madara’s plan to get as far away from that mouth full of teeth is once again thwarted by the Stupid Senju Stump, who steps behind him and grips both shoulders. Madara can’t help but close his eyes when Tobirama saunters up to him, and though he doesn’t flinch, it’s a **very near** **thing**. Especially when the first place Tobirama puts that great big nose of his is between Madara’s legs.

Tobirama  **growls** at him, low and very clearly displeased. In fact Madara can see keeled scales along that narrow body bristle and stand on end, eyes suddenly wide open in active Sharingan. Having a dragons’ mouth that close to his cock is evidently  **very** worth a fight-or-flight response, most powerful Uchiha alive or not.

 

Red eyes look up at him, and somehow they’re a lot more... unfocused than they were a moment ago. A  **hot** gust of air flutters his robes, and that’s about the only warning he gets before teeth clamp around his waist. “ **Hashirama! Call him off! This is NOT FUNNY!** ” His voice is entirely too shrill, cracking in places with something akin to panic.

When all his childhood best friend does is pat his shoulder and turn to walk at Tobirama’s shoulder, Madara  **screams** . And then stops almost immediately when that sparks a warning growl of displeasure that he can feel in his chest cavity. The Uchiha briefly considers giving the dragon a good Katon to eat, but it’s as though Hashirama reads his mind.

“I  **really** wouldn’t if I were you. He won’t hurt you for it, but I wouldn’t even spare giving you the worst kind of Hanahaki a second thought.” When he turns to look at the fool, he’s grinning in that way Madara’s mother did when she’d had the most unpleasant list of punishments in store for him. Izuna gets that same look right before Madara sets off the trigger for his prank. So Madara sits tight.

 

This **really** wasn’t what he’d expected to happen to him, and Madara **almost** wishes he’d Katoned Tobirama. It’s a **difficult** choice, but he prefers being licked by a long, **wet** , **barbed** tongue over being suffocated by a plant growing in his chest cavity. **Just**. Hashirama is still  laughing, lounging naked on his back in the water as he is. “Couldn’t you **at** **least** wear some fucking underwear?!”

“Not like you’re faring any better.” The Senju sputters before another fit of mirth catches him at the face Madara pulls when that tongue scrapes between his shoulder blades. It’s  **true** though, Tobirama had torn his clothes right off his body- fundoshi and all- before proceeding to  **wash** him. First by almost  **drowning** him in the river, and now by licking him from head to toe.  **Thoroughly** .

Madara  **squeals** like a little girl when he’s licked from the insides of his thighs to his tailbone, and Hashirama laughs so hard he disappears underwater with a sputtered gurgle. When he surfaces again, Madara is being ground into the pebbles of the riverbank by a Tobirama who had taken his blind shoving as an invitation to  **cuddle** .

 

When Tobirama deems him clean enough an hour and a half later, he’s tucked neatly against a chest of smooth scales and joined by a still entirely naked Hashirama.  _ Honestly, has the man got  _ **_no_ ** _ sense of  _ **_propriety_ ** . He huffs and looks very pointedly  **away** form the Senju’s bare lap, and right into a slit red pupil observing him from under long snowy lashes.

Exactly  **how** it’s possible for a dragon to look so  **smug** is escaping Madara, but there’s an unmistakable smirk curling those lips. When he glares, all Tobirama does is stare him right in the eye as he curls tighter around the two of them. The wine red eye slides slowly closed, and the breaths against his back slow. “Stupid, impossible Senju.”

Half an hour later finds him still being  **cuddled** , pressed up against both the napping Senju brothers. Hashirama is snoring loudly next to him.  _ I’d pity Mito if she wasn’t such a witch, but she deserves this _ . Struggling out from under Tobirama’s thick tail had proven futile, so Madara leans back and closes his eyes. The steady, slow thumping against his back luls him into a semi-wakeful state as the sun sets.  _ Izuna is  _ **_never_ ** _ going to hear about this _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Facepalm*  
> I did some art, not for this specifically but just a portrait of the Senju Brothers.
> 
> https://66.media.tumblr.com/671f3d25a5aacec3c0e70d2cbdf0c7ff/tumblr_pkd3yeSjy51v22at2o1_1280.jpg


	13. Thick Skulled Idiots

Izuna, as it turns out, has some sort of special sense for finding him when he’d rather not be found. “Why in Kami’s name are you so  **slimy** ?!” The arm that had been flung over his shoulders is quickly removed, and Madara would laugh at that face if he was feeling a little more centered. The cuddles had been  **nice** ,  _ almost drowning and slight crushing aside _ , and it’s disturbing.

A thorough bath and a cup of tea later, and Madara has just finished the retelling of  his ordeal. Izuna’s face had gone from sadistically amused to the face of a man who has had some sort of religious epiphany. Madara  **hates** that face, it’s the same one he’s had on the numerous occasions that he’d tried to imitate Tobirama’s frightening variation of exploding tags, and almost killed himself in the process. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Izuna turns those distant eyes to him, and says “I can’t believe you’re this dense.” It’s rapt and almost whispered, but Madara squaks and flails anyway. “ **I am not DENSE!** ” All that gets him is an incredulous stare from under a raised eyebrow. Madara is entirely within his rights to hurl his teacup at the ungrateful little shit. He’ll make Izuna clean it up after and then find the longest, most boring mission possible for his sibling.

 

The day after next finds him back at the river, sandwiched between his sibling and the Senju Idiot. Izuna had been absolutely  **adamant** that Madara come along. “Big Izuna!” And Kagami. How he let his brother con him into looking after the little terror  **and** that great slobbering beast is beyond him. Even  **worse** is how  **happy** they both are. Kagami wriggles next to him the moment Tobirama slides out of the river. The younger Senju brother seems enamoured with the child, stepping eagerly forward and around Madara to nose at the boy.

Hashirama provides a litany of cooing noises at the sight of an giggling Kagami trying to pet the nose sniffing him up and down, patting at his hair when it’s ruffled by the snuffling breaths. Madara is next to be nosed down, though his is interspersed with tiny licks that rasp against his clothing. “ **Don’t you dare** !” He tugs his sleeve free of those teeth just in time. He’s  **never** going to forgive Tobirama for shredding his garments. Or for anything that happened after that.

“Anyway, farewell my dear friend!” By the time he turns to Hashirama, he and Izuna have disappeared almost entirely into the trees. “ **Oi! Come back here you TRAITORS! You can’t just LEAVE ME HERE!** ” Evidently they can, and Izuna will be lucky to get out of that pond before his next birthday. He glares at where Tobirama is rolling over for Kagami’s light pushing. “I hate you both.” It comes out a lot softer than he means it to.  _ Uchiha Madara, scourge of the battlefield and baby sitter of dragons and toddlers _ .

 

That marks the beginning of his Sunday routine visits. Honestly, he doesn’t  **hate** them. He’s never going to tell Izuna, or anyone else for that matter, but it brings a special kind of lightness to his heart and does  **wonders** for that ache in his shoulders. Once he gets used to how eager Kagami seems to climb right into Tobirama’s mouth, that is. He’d almost had a stroke the first time it had happened.

As the weeks go by, the Senju himself seems to go from somewhat frantic in his… attentions, to ‘pushy cat’. His rubbing turns from something that almost topples Madara off his feet to gentle brushes, chewing of his obi becomes soft nudges and eventually Tobirama is content to limit his cuddling to resting his head on Madara’s legs. It’s  **fine** . Not pleasant, because that head alone weighs nearly as much as Izuna, but any sort of complaints Madara has evaporate into thin air upon discovery of the  **purring** .

_ Or perhaps it’s snoring _ ? The thrum of it vibrates in Madara’s chest cavity and stutters a little in the pause between inhale and exhale. Whatever it is, it’s entirely at fault for Madara’s hand reaching up to scratch at the fine scales behind the Senju’s ears. They rasp a little on his gloves, but it’s entirely worth it when that noise hitches and deepens. Kagami joins in his petting, and Tobirama melts into a very long puddle when tiny fingers dig into the fur at the back of his skull.

 

By the time an undeniably pregnant Mito starts invading their get togethers, Madara has started receiving ‘gifts’. It’s small things at first, pebbles of all shapes and colours and an antler or two if he’s lucky. When Tobirama arrives one crisp afternoon with a  **whole** stag, Mito is the first to congratulate Madara on his idiocy. “At the rate things are going, my child will be a grandparent by the time you realise he’s courting you.” “ **He’s WHAT?!** ”

Confronting Hashirama about the fact that his scaly little brother is  **flirting** with Madara only gets him more aggravating comments. “I’m actually a little shocked you’re this stupid. Ow! I said a little!” It’s particularly offensive coming from that twigs-for-brains Senju. And more than just a little embarrassing.  _ Suddenly things make a lot more sense _ . Then it strikes him. “He’s been  **fondling** me  **on purpose** !” There’s that look again, and he’s not above trying to set Hashirama on fire for it.

The gifts only get increasingly lavish from there. On the bright side, his clan is eating  **very** well this winter and the pelts they get help stave off frostbite. Tobirama on the other hand seems to relish the cold, particularly the thick ice over the river. He delights in taking his little Kagami fur bundle and sending him sliding down the river bank, only to slither after him like some great white serpent.

 

It’s mid winter when Madara visits sans the little tyke for the first time. It’s also the first time Madara has brought a gift of his own. The tiny blown glass dragon isn’t big, and it certainly isn’t imaginative, but it’s coiled pose had reminded Madara of the Senju. He presents it on an open palm, head turned away, and almost drops it when  **fingers** brush against his gloves.

Tobirama looks just as shocked when Madara whirls. The glass figure is held reverently in trembling fingers, and pale lips are parted in surprise. Lips that are rather rapidly shading toward blue. Madara’s eyes are drawn downward by the sudden appearance of far more pale skin than he should be seeing. “Why are you  **naked** ?!”

His only reply is crashing branches, followed by a frantic Hashirama. “Tobira! You’re back!” The elder Senju is at their side in a bare moment, wrapping those gigantic arms around his sibling and hoisting him into the air. “Anija! Put me down, you’ll break it!” Hashirama is crying, but sets his sibling gently on his feet. “I came as soon as Touka said she could sense you again. I’ve missed you so much.” The last part is said so softly Madara almost doesn’t catch it. “What do you mean ‘missed him’? You see him more often than I do.” The Uchiha is ignored in favour of more sobbing.

The Senju leave him standing on the river bank, and only Madara sees how carefully Tobirama holds the figurine. Cradles it to his chest when Hashirama drapes a cloak over his bare shoulders. Madara also sees the shy fleeting glance sent over one shoulder just before the duo disappears among the trees, but he’s going to keep that to himself.

 

The first meeting in regards to building the village takes place a week later. Apparently they’d all been waiting for something important which the Senju decide Madara isn’t privilege to. Izuna knows, that sly little weasel. But no matter how many times Madara uses his sibling to stop the koi pond from freezing over, the little prat won’t say anything. So here they are; three Senju, four Uchiha, Uzumaki Mito and Nara Shikakami. They’re sitting inside this time, thankfully out of the snow and moderately warm.

Tobirama sits across from him, and looks almost uncomfortably squashed between the Oni Woman and his elder sibling. Kagami has taken up residence in Touka’s lap again despite Hikaku’s protests, and seems far too happy to have his curls petted by someone who looks like they could bench press Hashirama  **and** Madara. When nobody speaks, Madara takes it upon himself to break the silence. “Can we at least do away with the henge?”

Tobirama looks surprised, and turns wide eyes to the Nara Clan Head in alarm. Shikakami smiles lazily at him. “If the deer don’t care, disliking your looks is far more troublesome for me to bother.” A discreet hand sign later, and the illusion dispells. Madara thinks Tobirama looks better like this in any case.  _ Not that we’re looking in the first place, it’s only a factual statement _ . Those  markings draw the eye toward those pretty red eyes, and the fluffy mobile ears are just overkill. Kagami takes one look at the horned Senju and immediately moves to sit in his lap.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment or a kudos. I welcome your opinions, let me hear 'em.


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